On Tuesday I gave a presentation to the Junior Syndicate to share my learning of critical literacy. As teachers we all aim to prepare our students for success in this ever changing world and I believe Critical Literacy is just one area in which we can do this.

Shift since using new writing criteria

In using the new criteria sheet at writing time my students are now producing stories that are in sequence and have the correct structure for a recount, however we are not producing a lot of detail or interest words it is time to make a change.

I introduced this book by Roald Dahl, The Enormous Crocodile. This book is a good introduction to words that can add detail and interest to a story. Each day we read aloud 3-5 pages. The students were hooked! We looked closely at any new language that was introduced and thought aloud of ways we could use it, for example: the word swizzle.

 appeared in the sentence buddy of some students that wrote about playing hide and seek with their friends . I swizzled my head around quickly as I looked for my friends. We also printed off colourful adjective cards from sparklebox and grouped those as an activity - what words had similar meaning, what words had opposite meaning, put all the colour words together etc.

Inquiry Map

I had a very interesting conversation with our in-school COL teacher (Robyn Anderson) and she helped me to complete a map of my inquiry for the year. This map will help me to keep focused on my inquiry and the main focuses that I have identified for myself and my students.

Student created success criteria for recount writing

After looking at my students writing I realised that we needed to come up with a success criteria together. First we looked at an example piece of writing and looked closely at the features that were included in a good piece of writing.

Example:

We then highlighted the features that we could see and from that made a criteria that we could follow during writing time. Below is our new criteria for writing a recount.

Criteria for recount writing

1.Writing must have a title

2. When did this event take place: Yesterday... On Monday... At the weekend... In the holidays... A long time ago... Last night... After school... Today... This morning...

3. Sequence the story/event: First... Next... Then... After... Finally...

4. How it made me feel: excited thirsty sad wet happy hungry scared hot surprised tired angry cold

5. Check punctuation: . full stop ! exclamation mark ? question mark , comma ‘ apostrophe “ ” speech/ talking marks I capital letters

6. Edit my writing for spelling corrections Can I add some interesting/describing words

Update on reading and writing after testing Week 5/10

                                                                                                                                                                           

Reflections: Testing Regrouping, Refocus:  for Reading

Big improvement in reading fluency and understanding of text in all groups. Students love to read. Making reading to punctuation (full stop) and reading in two’s has really developed fluency, understanding and confidence.  The weekly sunshine classics challenge has also been a big hit with the students. Each week each group is provided with 12 new books. The challenge is to read and complete each book and the activities to 100% the student with the most read books and activities for the week receives the golden reader certificate. Each week I delete the old books and replace with new books over 4 levels (all below their guided reading level) when we need to repeat as all books have been covered but we are still having problems with the activities I delete my class, re-enter and load them in again approximately every 5 weeks. The progress I am seeing is great, well worth the extra time.

Reflections: Testing Regrouping, Refocus:  for Writing Improvement from all groups. Kamela, Aarush, Jerome and kane.M use a chart with list 1,2 and 3 spelling words blu tacked. They make their stories using the words on a whiteboard and then record the story into their book (Kane. M has his printed out which he writes over on day 2 and then dictates his story to me/t.Aide who writes his story onto paper for him to cut and paste the story into his book). A big focus on punctuation this term during shared book, poem, guided reading, shared writing has all helped develop the use of punctuation in their writing books. The students love making sentence buddies for the focus punctuation which they then put on the wall. I also have noticed that my students are writing many more ideas in their stories. Writing time is mainly free choice (5 minutes to draft picture, 15 minutes to write story, must use the whole 15 minutes, then proof- reading and editing with the teacher.) and generally all writing produced is recount. We have looked at letters and next will be acrostic poems and instructions.

 

update for Term 2

TEACHING specific uses for certain kinds of punctuation for example using big book, poem, guided readers and sunshine classics to find the focus punctuation. In these examples we have speech marks. When we identify the punctuation we have to then write it as a whole sentence. We used sentence buddies as the students enjoy making these to then display on the classroom wall.

In using these sentence buddies to identify punctuation the students have begun to use some of the practised punctuation in their own writing.
Another practice that I have been using during reading time is for the students to read in two's to a full stop before the next two carry on with the reading. This has had great results as all students have to be engaged with the text, as they don't know when it will be their turn to read. They can pick up when a group has added, or missed out words or read a word incorrectly making them manage their own learning, student led over teacher led.
I have also found the activities in sunshine classics very useful for example, from level 10+ students must add the correct punctuation or words to a page from the text. As an extra incentive we have a reading challenge each week. The top three students are presented with a bronze, silver or gold certificate on a Friday for reading the most set books but they must achieve 100% on all book activities. I now have students reading up to 12 books per week on top of the guided and independent books that they already read.

Will an increased combination of rich classroom talk and deliberate acts of teaching of spelling and punctuation, accelerate shift across all learning areas?

TEACHING analyse and appropriately use assessment information which has been gathered formally and informally

After the writing test it highlighted that my students had a lack of comprehension as to the use of punctuation. We were also lacking in ideas and spelling of lists 1,2,3 …

Design for learning Conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme

Focus 1:

Increase our spelling accuracy.

Provide the first 3 lists on the board, play word swat games, include these words in our reading programme (read, speak,write,find)

Have a weekly 10 minutes of writing down as many words as you can correctly.

Record this in a graph and present weekly to the students - with certificates for bronze, silver, gold

Focus 2:To create a better understanding of what punctuation is and how to use it correctly.Use sentence buddy to help develop this skill in a fun way. Make connections in big book, poems, guided reading. Add punctuation to the board alongside the list 1,2,& 3 words.

                          

Focus 3:

To produce more ideas in our writing.

Every 2nd week to provide a picture that the students can add other pictures to for example “My day at the Beach”

Lots of opportunity for oral language to discuss what they have experienced when they went to the chosen place.

Make the picture on their ipad and label what they have added.

Talk about their picture again through the shared TV

Write a recount together including what they added/found at the chosen place

Separately go off and write their own recount using their created picture to help them.