Meaningful Experineces

Ok, so here I go again.  Writing, again! This time I am thrilled to say I have created meaning for my students and excitement.  A friend of mine has been blogging about her Greyhound for over a year now. Every time she puts up a new post it lands on my Facebook feed and every time for the last year I have scrolled on by.  On Monday I didn't scroll on by.  I read it and it sparked an idea for me.  I ask Rach if she would mind if I shared it with my class.  Luckily for my students she agreed.  We read several of h posts and worked on reading strategies. We had fantastic discussions around what she has done as a writer.  We left a comment with questions.  All of our questions were answered along with a post dedicated to us here it is : A big Thank You

My students then wrote responses which lead them to learning to comment on blogs.  We were then lucky enough to have a Facebook message from her saying that she would be happy to take a day off work to come up for us to meet the dogs. This ignited my students fire. Last night they took home their writing books and made jottings of their pet,a skill I learnt the previous Saturday from Gail Loane.  They then wrote some amazing pieces. With Rach now coming up they are looking forward to having an audience for their writing.My students are so excited and inspired to write.

So where to from here with this real motivation.  Letters to the Adopt a Greyhound asking how we can support.  Designing and making a picture book of Chris and Mila's visit. Thank you email to Rach.  Blog posts for each of the students individual 'I have a voice blogs!'

I have become so passionate about teaching reading and writing I don't want to teach anything else.

Rich literacy leads to rich learning! I can't wait to share my next post on writing feedback! Watch this space.

Writing Observation Feedback

Yesterday Tracey and Raewyn came in to observe my progress in teaching writing.  In my initial observation I was teaching whole class and was making limited links between reading and writing.  I knew in myself that my ability to teach writing has improved dramatically.

Feedback from Tracey highlighted my progress and also the explicit links I make between reading and writing.  As my teacher inquiry focus is on catering for diverse needs, I am now teaching my students in ability groups.  One recommendation that Tracey did have for me was making my learning intention explicit to students at the beginning of the lesson.  This is something that I have done previously.  However, now teaching in groups and making sure my writing programme is meaningful I am finding myself teaching lots of parts rather than focusing on one specific thing.  As a class we have had a focus on wholenes of our writing.

What I have taken from this is not to cram to much in as I could be overwhelming my students.  Be clear on what it is that I want from my students.

Seeing kids shine!!

With a continued focus on writing I am pleased to announce a feeling of success.  After working with a group  of writers and wrapping up a writing session, I had students waiting to want to share their writing with me!  For the first time in 6 years of teaching I think I might have lit a fire in some of my students! Whoooo

Being a reluctant writer myself and not really having a passion to say anything, I'm now writing daily with my students and becoming observant of my world around me.  It has become quiet scary in a sense when I am reading, personal novels, for pleasure and start to say to myself that was a well constructed sentence.  I can see why the author used that!! I am becoming a writer.  Just like my student who today was so excited by their piece, I am also excited to be sharing.

Where to from here - start a writing blog of my life, my observations for my students to read.

Here is the piece my student celebrated with me, it is worth sharing with the world!

An overcast day I was at school, grasping my chocolate milk in my hand trying to avoid the soccer ball.  It comes flying towards me.  The force of the kick is so strong I can't dodge it.  Bang! The ball hits me straight in the guts.

Not knowing my primo milk lid wasn't screwed on tightly, next thing I know my bottle full of milk is splattered all on my back.  This wasn't so primo at all!

My top was plain white, I couldn't believe my eyes my best friend was standing there snickering at me.  I badly want to throw mud at her face.

The bell went I raced home, hoping Mum wouldn't fire up like a volcano.  "Muuuum, um well I kinder spilt primo milk on my back."  I turned around Mum's face turned pail.  "OMG" She says "We better soak it."  The next day, thankfully the primo milk stain had come out.  I was so relived 

Writing Ideas with Raewyn

Focus: Planning and variety of sentence structures teaching ideas.

Vcop - building on vocabulary online tool

Think literacy - Cross - Curricular Approaches

Effective Literacy - Years 9-13

Moving into Writing Groups

Well we have been in groups for 5 weeks now.  This seems to be working well.  However, I have had my most successful teaching when working with students pieces of writing.  I need at least 40mins with the writing group to be able to re work the writing.  So I am dropping down to seeing one group a day where we re-work and share write together.  I am finding it hard to plan to far ahead in writing as they are now doing more writing on their own choice.  So the lessons come from the sharing.  More formative yes!!! I have goals of what each group is working on.  However sometimes a piece that a student has written leads more to a different writing strategy.

By moving to one group for writing I am then able to conference with the group longer and meet their needs. Evidence well here goes:

Target student wrote: (1st attempt no teaching)
Right Choice day is a day of fun that keeps children happy.  If you get 2 detentions you won't be able to go to right choice.  When right choice day comes you will choose what activity you want to part in.  Wrong choice is bad because it provides writing, dictionary work and you can't talk.  At the end of the day you would be wet or be wanting to watch the same movie again.

We then had a session on being selective on our ideas and what was the message we wanted our reader to get.

Target student then wrote
Right Choice day is a day of fun out of the class and keeps children happy.  Children have to have good behaviour to go to the day of fun and games.  There is games and loads of fun like wheels, sports, water fights and movies.  You have to be good like using your manners and coley hearts and treat others the way that you want to be treated.  Right Choice is for people who have a good attitude towards school.  At the start of the day you get a choice of what you would like to do! At the end of the day you always want to go back!

He has been more selective of relevant ideas and his next step would be now to organise them in a logical order within his paragraph as he still jumps about.

CPL - Beliefs in Writing

I found this session very insightful.  Being given the opportunity to reflect on what I think my beliefs in writing are. Having to come up with a top 5, here is what I came up with:

1. Everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, and teachers can help students to become better writers/ Composing occurs in different modalities and technologies.
2. Writing and reading are related.
3. Writing grows out of many different purposes.
4. Writing is a process.
5. Assessment of writing involves complex, informed, human judgement.

It was amazing the common beliefs that we shared as a staff, with reading and writing are related and writing is a process.  One that I would like to see in the top is my number 1 as this states expectations in students and our schools ICT capabilities.  

One thing that has sat with me since this session is that I need to make explicit to my students that they write every day, all day for a range of different purposes.  

Writing Groups Day 1

Today I did it!!! Little hassle at all.  I think I found it more draining on me as it is intense teaching groups all morning.  Was it a success?  Hell yeah! All students were engaged focused and enjoyed writing.  One group worked on Kurpoof making digital movies using speech.  This was helpful as they were practising writing but given the settings and themes.  Another group worked on a story starter, When I looked down the toilet... this was really successful.  These students were my best writer but it gave me a better picture of where they were at.  I had several creative ones but others that rambled.  By allowing this group to share at the end it opened them to reflect on their writing.  My group I worked with need a lot of support and we will basically need to write together.  I need to come up with ways to get them to manipulate writing to see it in the view of the audience.

The one opportunity that I am going to make sure that I do at the end of writing is to share pieces and have self reflection time.