Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 8

WHAT?

My next lesson on writing was a follow up on the lesson started by my student teacher. She had begun a memoir lesson as this was the next step for the children. She set them up by asking them to observe a routine of a family member after she gave them an exemplar called, “My Dad shaving.” The children’s next step was to go and observe and make mental notes to help craft a piece of writing. Her idea was to use a graphic organiser to help the children to understand the beginning, middle and end of the routine.

The children were required to write in the different shaped boxes the routine they had observed and with Teacher support this was achieved successfully for some children. As part of the follow up, I gave the children I piece that I had written on my routine about getting ready to travel  by aeroplane, as I had just been away to Christchurch for the weekend. I had discussed with Verity where I should take the children’s writing after they had started but hadn’t finished the previous lesson.

I showed Verity my exemplar and my lesson plan before teaching this memoir writing. The pre-observation help me to clarify what she was looking for and where I hoped to take the lesson. I wrote notes on my plan and I was ready to teach the children to notice how good writers can combine different genres to describe to reader what is happening.

I read out my piece for the children and asked them to find the steps I had taken to get ready to go on an aeroplane. The children sat in a circle and worked collaboratively to highlight the steps within the exemplar. The children used Think-Pair-Share to tell each other how the highlighted words were only part of the writing. I challenged them to tell me why this was so. The children were able say that the author (myself) had describe what I had done and the writing tools I had used.

My observation was over and I shared the text type, the purpose and the success criteria for this piece of writing. I asked the children to tell me what they hoped to achieve and what their piece of writing would have in it. I worked through the visualisation techniques that Verity had shown us with very little ‘buy-in’ from the children with a number of them signalling each other through half closed eyes as well as one child calling out. The children were given time to write. I worked on a table with my more reluctant writers and one child who had been away for the previuos week.

On the teacher’s table, one child who is a capable writer but takes ages to get going sat with his piece. He didn’t get going as usual. The noise in the class was beginning to get noisey and the children weren’t writing. I stopped the class, and step by step told them that they had to create a picture in their head in order to be able to write. I showed them that the step that they had written with my student teacher were only parts of the writing and they were writing so the audience could understand. The class became quiet once more and the children were writing. I continued working with the children on the writing table.

Once the children had become noisey again and I looked at the time, I brought the children back to the writing circle so they could share what they had written for the others. The lollipop sticks were used so the children were randomly chosen and shared their best sentence they had written to describe.

SO WHAT?

I was of mixed feelings as I was very surprised on how the children had analysed the exemplar and what they had taken on board about writing tools. I had my observational feedback from Verity the same afternoon which helped as she pointed out that I was taking too long in analysis stage and I needed to deliberately tell the children that my exemplar was a piece that was used to describe and had elements of steps embedded within it. As my children are Year 3s and 4s, it makes more sense to do this.

I also shared my concerns on what was happening during the visualisation stage of the lesson and how I found it very disruptive to getting the children to know what they were writing about. Verity said that I need to be explicit and set very high expectations, challenge the children to understand the purpose. That by running ‘the movie in their heads’ it will make them better writers and it also fires up the synapses in their brain so that they can write with more clarity. I did say that I had to stop the writing time as the children were getting too noisy and she showed me where I had missed the mark in the lesson. When I told her what I had done, she said that can happen sometimes it can be an idea to shelf that lesson and start again. She shared with me times when she knows that lesson hasn’t been as good as it could have been by the effort of one of her children.

NOW WHAT?

My next step is to ensure that I am working on making the lesson do-able in the given time right through all the stages. Maybe not a whole piece but through the whole lesson sequence. It will make the lesson seem faster and the children will be more engaged.

When leading the children through the visualising stage, I need to be firm and fair to ensure a high expectation of behaviour.  If I am successful with this the children will know what they need to write and their writing will have more sincerity.

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

― Sidney J. Harris

Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 7

WHAT?

To follow up on the previous lesson, the children were brought back to the ‘helping circle’, I started the lesson by writing up the success criteria onto the whiteboard. The children were then encouraged to ‘point to’ where they had activated the nouns and use precise word choice to show what the noun was doing.

I also asked the children to show their partner where they had added more to the sentence to give a sense of what, where and how, to add more detail to the sentence. Looking around I could see the faces of the children and there was a range of disappointment and regret.

Congratulating the children on now being able to activate nouns, use precise word choice and follow their suggestion of 5 sentences, they had had success with their writing. I asked the children to tell their partner what they thought structure meant. The murmers around the class were about buildings and how it is built. I told the children that structure helps us to write with the correct setting out as well.

I used their exemplar and pointed out how the noun was on the line above the verb and that becauseit was a poem, they both began with capital letters. I drew a visual representation to show the children how each verse/stanza was set out. I asked the children if they had any questions, there was a number of clarifying questions.

I lead the children to think about two events that happened the previous day – the unexpected fire drill and the thunderstorm. The children were encouraged to discuss the events with their partner and the discussion was very animated. I could hear them using elaborate word choice. I directed the children to extend themselves by adding more detail to the when, what, and how.

The children were given time to visualise and then time to write. There was a number of children working with myself and another group working in a small group with another teacher at a table. The children were highly engaged and wrote with some ease. One reluctant writer working with me, wanted to write, and was animated to record his ideas.

Once the time for the lesson was coming t an end, I recalled the children back to the helping circle and shared what they had written with each other. I also reminded the children to change their writing when they heard a good idea as this was a helping circle – a way to help them to change and improve their writing.

SO WHAT?

The children realised where they hadn’t followed the structure and how they could add more detail to their writing. I also feel that the visual representation help set up the children for success. Another focus for the children based on the writing rubric is to give and respond to feedback. The helping circle is a correct vehicle to establish this practice.

Having an event that provoked many ideas created engagement and a willingness to take more risks with their writing. I also realise that it is ‘ok’ to rework the same lesson but to work on making the children more aware of the structure and how they can extend their writing to improve from one lesson to the next.

NOW WHAT?

My next step to check in with those few children who still haven’t achieved the correct structure and setting out. There were a couple of children who weren’t activating their nouns using verbs but are using similes. The helping circle is getting there but I still need to be more persistent to make this work.

I will be encouraging the children to publish these poems and I will make an effort to try to get some of the poems published into the school’s newletter as well.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

- Orson Scott

Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 6

WHAT?

To get a sense of whether or not the children are getting the idea of activating their nouns and can now apply this in a range of text types I decided to teach them another observational poem but this time the structure was different. Instead of the verb following the noun in the same line, it was written with a capital letter on the next line.

The lesson sequence started the same, with the children gluing in their exemplar, this time it was an excerpt of a poem written in 1914 by Wilfred Owen. We were given this lesson plan by Verity in our last PD session on authorship. I didn’t even know who Wilfred Owen was before then, he is a master of poetry who writes with realism and compassion using imagery to explain the contrast and reality of the first World War.

As part of the analysis I guided the children to ‘notice’ how the author had activated the nouns in the poem and how it was structured differently than before. I spent some time unpacking the meaning of words like ‘fleshes’ so the children could understand the imagery used. There were some gasps when I said that it was the skin of the boys until I remarked that we don’t swim in our clothes.

I encouraged the children to make connections to our wetlands and the piece of writing that they had just completed. The children were able to activate the nouns successfully and made precise language choice, but more importantly could verbalise what they had been learning.

The children were then lead through the visualisation process and then were created the success criteria together on what we had noticed in the analysis. The children were all  forthcoming with number of sentences they needed to write, to activate the nouns and use precise language choice. I deliberately scaffolded the structure and setting out of the poem. Also with the children, I created a word bank of nouns and verbs that they could use in their writing.

The children were then encouraged to write about our wetlands and use the new structure. There were a number of  children working with me in a workshop situation and a few others with my student teacher. There was a busy buzz as they recorded their ideas to create their own poetry.

As the lesson came to an end, the children were once more brought down to the mat into a helping circle and encouraged to share their work. Again I used the ‘ice block’ sticks to randomly select who was sharing. The children activated the nouns and are so much better at choosing words to say exactly what they mean.

SO WHAT?

I felt that the lesson went as expected and the children understand the lesson structure although we do need more practice on being happy to all close our eyes and ‘run the movie in our heads’ before writing.

When marking the children’s work I noticed that the children activated the nouns and used precise language choice to say what they meant. But they hadn’t followed the text structure of having the noun on one line followed by the verb on the next line and those children who were confident writers hadn’t pushed themselves to add more detail to create picture in the reader’s mind. Some had even used the same endings - in the wetlands.

NOW WHAT?

I need to repeat this lesson again but use a better stimulus as this is what I feel is missing. Luckily after lunch the school had an unexpected fire drill in the drizzle and before our allotted PE time and the children were huddled under umbrellas waiting find out why the alarm had gone off. As well after school there was fierce thunder storm above the area where most of the children lived so that may activate better writing.

My aim this term was for the children to give each other feedback and take action on to improve the message in our work. This still a work in progress.

“A fine writer will always make you feel that [you're right on the spot, watching the plot happen]. And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

- Matilda written by Roald Dahl

Using Authorship to promote better writers - Part 5.1

WHAT?
Today I needed 5 children who had been away for the 'Changing Landscapes" lesson to catch up on learning they had missed. The children in the group were of mixed abilities and a mix of Year 3 and 4 s, girls and boys.

I began the lesson going through the exemplar, getting the children to analysis the language devices the author had used, activating the nouns and the precise vocabulary chosen to compare and then I asked the group to clarify. "Do willows weep?" There was a loud resounding no, I dug deeper, "Why has the author used these ideas?" The children said that it helped put a picture in your head about how the author wants us to feel about the pukeko leaving his home.

My next idea was to create a list of what people do that was in the poem. The group gave me all the correct ideas - whisper, weep, cry, hide. I gave a name to this technique - personification. One child said, "That word has person in it!" Then we as a group wrote all the names of things found in the wetlands. Because this has been our topic for inquiry, the list grew quickly. I then asked the children to give me a sentence using one of the nouns and make it do some a person does to create a picture of how unhealthy the wetland in Waitawa bush is.

I scribed their idea for the sentence directly onto the table we were working at. The children wrote the sentence into their books. As we wrote I checked off the nouns we used and I wrote less and less of a whole sentence. For the last sentence, the children used the last words and wrote their own sentence activating the nouns and chose words to say exactly what they meant.

SO WHAT?
By creating the list of nouns and checking them off as the children their sentences, it was a simple plan that ensured the children were covering what was needed. The children responded well to the scaffolding of me writing the sentence starter. Although by the end of the lesson, the children had picked up on using different sentence starters and were prompting each other to do so.

The type of sentences were mostly complex as the children used conjunctions to write the sentence they had verbalise together. The sentences, this group used more quality verbs to personify and compare what the wetland was like - even though this group didn't visit our wetland, I used prompts of what would you see in an unhealthy wetland.

NOW WHAT?
I need to be more deliberate in the way I scaffold for the children the word banks. It will help my less abled writers to plan and track where they are up to. When the children are writing I need to rove more to ensure that all the children are getting my help and my enthusiasm for their efforts.

I am looking forward to my next lesson which is another type of poem that builds on activating nouns, choosing precise verbs to say exactly what the nouns is doing, and adds onto where and when.

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgeral

Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 5

WHAT?

As part of this writing journey, I have been trying to incorporate more of our ‘topic’ into the stimulus so that I am not doubling up on what I am doing. So I am making efforts to deliberately use relatable material for my children.

This is not as easy as it seems, I have been falling back on search methods such as Journal Surf to find pieces of writing that will give me what I hope the children will notice during the analysising stage. I have spent a number of hours looking for the ‘right’ piece.

My last effort was a piece called ‘Changing Landscapes” a poem by Desna Wallace – this piece discusses the way that the land is changing due to houses and neighbour hoods being built and how the willows weep and how the toetoe whisper and how the pukeko loses out.

For my stimulus I took the class into our local area which had a neglected wetlands that I hope that children would like to restore later in the term. We used the iPads to take photographs and discussed what we ‘noticed’ about the stage of the wetlands. We looked at the stage of the plants, the plants that should be in a wetlands and the lack of water as well.

After this I delivered my lesson using the plan I had written using the stimulus of the poem. I lead the children to notice the way the author had used personification to create a picture in the reader’s mind and help us understand better their feelings.  

I used the whiteboard to record the children’s ideas around activating the nouns and what we could possibly chose to make their writing come alive. Once the children understood that they could use words like strangling, dying, crying etc, they were more responsive to the activity.

Then to write – we co-constructed a success criteria, that I guide the children towards, although they did suggest the number of sentences that they should be able to write in the agreed amount of time – 15 minutes.

After writing the children were encouraged to indicate where they had activated the nouns, precise choice with their verbs and written 3 sentences. The children were asked to share their best sentence. I used the ‘ice block’ stick to randomise who would share their ‘best ‘ sentence.

SO WHAT?

The children were motivated by the trip to the Wetlands and how it wasn’t as good as it should be and that they are wanting to make changes to it. The poem also help them to visual and compare ways to ‘show’ the audience what they meant.

I was more deliberate in the way I used the language during relating to own life when we were looking around the wetlands. I also had spoken to Verity in the morning to see if I was on the right track. She suggested the way to lead the discussion in the wetlands and how to be deliberate with my word choice to enable the children to have an extended vocabulary.

When marking, or looking over the children’s work, I was amazed at the types of language they were using in their writing and actually how deep their thinking was. I had a number of boys who were highly engaged and actually wrote well and could verbalise what they wanted to say.

NOW WHAT?

I still have questions on how to use the helping circle to get my children to effectively give good feedback. What steps will I need to develop to ensure that this become a habit where the children are willingly changing their writing in response to what is being shared.

I am taking part in more PD with Verity this afternoon, so hopefully this will give me the next steps in my journey on creating better writers through authorship.

We want our young people to grow up knowing that writing is an important and deeply satisfying life skill, one that helps them make more sense of themselves and their world, one that helps them to communicate effectively. 

― Gail Loane