Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 19

WHAT?

As part of my assessment and to see where my next steps are for my learners, I decided it was time to mark my children’s writing in their books against the writing rubric and gather data on my hunches. The writing rubric has been created using the literacy progressions and was used extensively when we marked for National Standards. The children also have a ‘children friendly’ version in their writing books.

I have been teaching is mostly guided writing with the class in their writing books and using the exemplar, scaffolding ideas for the children. The success of this helps the children to structure the writing. I took some leave before the holidays and while I was out of class, the children had written using the ideas from their ‘seed’ notebooks to describe their own ‘object’ that they had outgrown and maybe still has special memories for them.

To make the job more do-able, I decided to mark 9 books at a time. I focussed on the pieces that the children had written independently and took my time to be fair and highlight their success on the writing rubric. I systematically worked through the criteria – Planning, Audience & Purposes, Content & Ideas, Structure, Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation, Revising and Publishing.

Due to the explicit teaching of precise language choice and using different sentence starters and other language devices, the children’s writing has made shift in the deeper features of structure and language features. One child (who is one of my low ability writers) had written without any errors and sequenced correctly – “My mum knows this book off by heart because she has read it so often.” Another low writer had written, “This is so special to me because I’ve had it since I was born, and my friend Ruby gave it to me.”

I also shared the children’s successes with them in the next teaching session and showed them where they had made shift on their own rubric. As well as I messaged a couple of families to share how impressed I was with the improvement in their child’s writing. From one parent – “That is a big improvement and a lovely and very correct story about her snuggle. She did sit down at home over 2 nights I think last term and wrote down all her ideas about her snuggle blanket and got my help with the spelling. She wrote the words she couldn't spell either in her note book or on a piece of paper and took it to school. So maybe not the huge improvement in spelling but I am sure there is still improvement and certainly with initiative as she knew all about what she was to do!”

SO WHAT?

Using the rubric help me to evaluate the children’s success and identify where I show be taking their writing as we move onwards. It has highlighted that we need to use to work on the deeper features of Structure especially on sequenced events with time connectives, e.g. first, next, after that, finally and using linking to show cause & effect, e.g. so, so that, as a result, this means that. Another area of need is Audience and Purpose - Recognises they are writing for others.

Another reason for marking using the writing rubric was have evidence for my PaCT judgements, that are needing to be done before the middle of the this term. As a team, we are going to moderate our judgements to have a clear picture of our cohort and where to next. I have spoken to Verity on how I have marked my writing and gave her a couple of pieces to check through and to see if I am on the ‘right’ track. She also suggested that I use the exemplars from tki as they are a great way to check.

NOW WHAT?

The writing genre that I have yet to teach with purpose is persuasive writing. Luckily for me, this is also the type of writing that needs good sequencing with time connectives and uses words that show cause and effect. Also this is the perfect genre for audience purpose.

I need to gather a range of my children’s writing for moderation with the team – a couple high, mid-range and low. Armed with the tki exemplars and the Teacher’s Support Material so that I can guide my team on where to next.

“No matter how much experience you have, there’s always something new you can learn and room for improvement.” 

― Roy T. Bennett

Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 18

WHAT?

I knew that Gail Loane’s ‘I’ve got something to say’, Chapter Nine called Character portrait would be my first place to get my planning sorted. Within the chapter, there is a framework for character portraits. I had used this chapter last year when I planned last years Father’s Day writing lesson. I had thoughts about using a child’s piece as the exemplar because this worked well for the ‘Hide and Seek’ writing.

The framework from the chapter is separated into 4 parts so I decided to plan 3 separate lessons for each of the paragraphs. The character description needs to have the first paragraph about the character’s physical description, second on the character’s behaviour (how they act) and the third paragraph, the interactions between character’s through dialogue.

For the first lesson, I handed out the exemplar to the children to glue in their books as usual. I lead the children’s focus to the first paragraph only. The children shared their noticing on how the author has described her dad’s physical features. I used question prompts, “What do we know about her dad? He’s bald. He’s tall because he kneels down to get eye to eye. And he wears glasses. How do we know these things?” The children had not been exposed to show not tell as a writing device so I used a powerpoint presentation.

To connect with their lives, the children faced a buddy knee to knee, and told them what their Grandparent looks like/ their physical appearance - think of 3 and 4  features that make them them. The children were very animated, I used the timer again to give each child time to share what they knew about the Grandparent they wanted to write about. The visualisation and co-constructing success criteria went without a hitch. The children were happy to write.

Part of the success criteria was to describe 3 features of their grandparent. As I roved I prompted the children to imitate the exemplar if their grandparent wears glasses and use what was in the exemplar. Some children successfully used these ideas and were very proud of their success. I used the sticks to pick 5 children to share their writing before lunch and that was the end of that lesson.

The next day, I started the lesson by focussing the children on the next paragraph which described how the author’s dad behaves, what he does. The children analysed the paragraph together and the lesson followed the same direction as before, they discussed with a buddy how their grandparent acts or what they do. I chose one child to share with the class, this worked well and motivated the others in the class to write there and then what their grandparent does.

The Helping Circle to finish the lesson was a buzz with the children wanting the share their writing on how their grandparent acts. Again I used the sticks to randomise the choice of the children who were to share and it was good to see other children using red pen to improve their own work as they heard others share. As part of the Helping circle routine, I asked the children show how they have used the success criteria by pointing to the words they have use precision with, using great punctuation, and using show not tell.

The writing of the third paragraph followed the same routine as before, I also used a powerpoint presentation on using creative dialogue, an another writing device to show not tell. I hooked the children in during the visualisation with my prompts - What does your Grandparent say?- Do they have a favourite saying? Or do they say the same things when they do something to you. Think of 3 and 4  things that they say that makes them them. The success criteria that we constructed together stated that the children needed to

use creative dialogue to show not tell (describe their grandparent), describe 3 or 4 things that my grandparent says and use different sentence starters.

The children worked independently writing the last paragraph and I told them that the author had finished her writing with the statement – ‘Even though my Dad is sometimes strict, I love him.’ I encouraged the children to conclude their own piece on their grandparent using a similar sentiment. This worked well and the children used a range of sentiments to finish their writing. Once the writing was completed, the children were asked to publish their writing using a Google doc and I proofed and posted on Seesaw. I also printed a copy to be laminated and put up on the back wall.

SO WHAT?

After each lesson, I had been marking the children’s work and I noticed that their next step was to use different sentence starters as they had used similar repeatative starts for each sentences like we had in the ‘My Dad’ poems. So I encouraged the children to notice the different sentence starters iin the exemplar during the analysis stage and then the children wanted this to be part of their success criteria.

What I have noticed recently is that the children are responding to writing a do-able amount and that they now understand what a paragraph is – a group of similar ideas. This has helped with the buy-in.

NOW WHAT?

All-in-all I am pretty proud of the development of my writers and how my pedagogy has changed this year. I do have a few questions on how to mark this writing when I am deliberately setting up the children for success. Do I need to use our writing rubric to know where to next or speak to Verity on how to do this?

Also I feel that my Year 3 children are doing so much better at taking on the pointers and making changes to their writing than the Year 4s. I need to get some data around this and see if my hunches are true and what efforts I need to make so that Year 4s progess as well as they should.

“Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was ‘terrible,’ describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, ‘Please, will you do my job for me?'” —C.S. Lewis

References

Loane, G., & Muir, S. A. (2010). I've got something to say: leading young writers to authorship. Aries Publishing Company.

Using Authorship to promote better writers – Part 17

WHAT?

For the PaCT assessment in writing, one of the aspects is called creating texts to influence others. This aspect has 5 signposts on the progressions  and these become more complex, the signposts are weighted on NZC as well. The signpost that I chose to focus on this term due my assessment data was the 3rd sign post.

This is explanation of that signpost - Even when they are novice writers, students create texts in order to challenge their audience to do something or think about something differently. They write to argue a point or persuade someone to change their mind.

Expert writers know how to effectively achieve these purposes. They choose appropriate structures and features, and control the language they use in order to make the maximum impact on their audience.

One of the illustrations is called Grandpa 2 – is an invitation from a boy to his Grandfather to come to a helper’s morning tea because he has helped with the planting of the garden. This became the basis of my next writing lesson. I copied and pasted the invite (corrected spelling and typos), with the plan and this formed the exemplar for the children. I handed out 2 pieces of paper and encouraged the children to glue them in their books side by side so that they could see how the plan helps scaffold the letter. During the analysis I lead the children to notice the planning and the letter setting out. I used question prompts - Why has Sam written the letter? The children highlighted in the letter how Sam has used the plan to help him scaffold his ideas. I questioned the class about the use of paragraphs and how the plan helped with the structure of the letter.

To connect this writing lesson to the children’s own life, I told the children that we would be sending out invites for our Grandparent/Whanau Day and that I would be sending them out via Seesaw messaging. I introduce the idea of persuading or convincing someone at this point. The children spoke with a buddy what points we could persuade a special person to come to our class on this special day. They brainstormed the WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY for the day.

The children then closed their eyes and I spoke -  “I want you to think about your Grandparents… What would they want to know about Grandparents Day? What sorts of things would they like to do here at school in the classroom? Do they know about using iPads what sorts of things do think they would find interesting? How can we persuade them to buy our recycled paper?” The class constructed the success criteria using What, When, Where, and Why, the reasons for coming, choosing the best words and including a closing - review reasons why you want them to come.

The children first were asked to create a plan as shown in the exemplar and this was the first component of the writing lesson and all the children had to write the first day. I haven’t exposed the children to many writing planners as I use graphic organisers for reading and during topic research. The lesson was successful and the next day we began crafting our invites for Grandparents/Whanau Day. One child struggled as both sets of Grandparents were away and he wanted them to come and knew that it was impossible as well. Some children wrote directly onto a Google doc and shared it with me and then I was able to send the message out. One set of Grandparents replied and I quick show the class the power of persuasion, this also helped to motivate the rest of the class.

I was away for Grandparents/Whanau Day, but by all accounts it was a very successful day and at one time there were 25 adults roaming the class and working with the children.

SO WHAT?

The children were able to use the plan to help scaffold their writing successfully although some of the invitations lacked substance. I didn’t send out as many messages as I hoped from the children directly to family and whanau. I did send an all families post out myself informing them of the upcoming event as I know I have Grandparents linked to the children’s portfolios.

The plan helped the children scaffold their writing into paragraphs but I’m not too sure that they realise the purpose of paragraphs and how to write them effectively.

NOW WHAT?

I need to find a way to teach the writing of paragraphs and help the children understand their purpose. Hopefully I can build on their enthusiasm for their grandparents and maybe writing character description of them might be a way to do that. I know that Gail Loane’s “I’ve got something to say” book may the place to go for inspiration and another way to utilise the ‘seed’ notebooks again.

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
― John Steinbeck