TAI - Reluctant writers - reflection

This week I tried one of the first activities my tutor suggested in our workshop.

Teach your students how to come up with keywords by playing a Topic game. Give a topic, pass a ball to each student, if you catch it, you have to say a word that is linked to the topic. e.g. Holiday is the topic - vocab might be: beach, sand, sun, car

After four lessons of passing the ball and coming up with keywords, the students had a clear understanding of what a title, keywords, sub-title, and bullet points. The last lesson was a bit harder, as I wanted to extend on the keywords, but our time was not enough. 
What I noticed:  establishing sub-titles is something the boys struggle with. My question is, do you give them subtitles so that they can learn a few variations or is there another activity I can do to develop their thinking around subtitles?

The first video shows how the students mainly focus on the looks. (their topic was "Dogs"). 

After reminding them to think further than just the looks, they managed to come up with keywords such as a kennel, meat, etc

The outcome of their planning, without support from me, is as follow. 

I kept them moving: play the topic game, run to their books, wrote keywords down. We did this with each sub-title.  This planning was done in 15minutes. After planning, the boys could retell in their own words what they wanted to say about each keyword.  

SO WHAT? 

* The planning was the students own, they knew what they wanted to say/write, and the topic was familiar. (Their choice)

* Although it was still very low-level ideas, I am hoping to teach them how to expand on their ideas next week in order to create a higher level writing sample.

* After showing them 2 different ways of planning, they were able to choose the one they preferred. It was interesting that they did not all choose the same one. So perhaps, giving students the option to choose the way they want to plan, might help to support their understanding. 

I think it's important to keep these boys interested and focussed. Keep them moving. Short, quick instructions. 

ALL Inquiry - Boys as Reluctant Writers

Yesterday I attended an ALL workshop and gained insight into why boys often don't enjoy writing, as well as some practical ideas on how to make writing interesting.

I know this is a long blog, but I wanted to formulate the ideas on paper before I forget it. It is such valuable information, that I'm hoping that everybody that reads my blog, will take something from it, and try it in their class.

We focussed on unpacking the writing process.

Workshop Powerpoint

Questions that arise:
* Do we have enough data to understand why the specific boys that I chose are reluctant writers? 
* What does our current writing systems and processes look like? 
* Does eAsstle impact on our planning? Majority of our planning is based on the outcome of the eAsstle assessments. 
* Why are students reluctant? What is really going on for each boy? Could it be the way the teacher is leading the writing programme? Could it be the relationships in the class? 

My goal: To enable change for the whole school.

Prewriting Stage: 
During the writing process prewriting and planning is the most important part of the writing process. It should not be rushed, there is no time limit. (This hooks in what Anna told us in our writing PLD's). Make this phase in the writing plan interesting. 
* Teach your students how to come up with keywords by playing a Topic game. Have a rugby ball - give a topic, pass the ball, if you catch it, you have to say a word that is linked to the topic. e.g. Holiday is the topic - vocab might be: beach, sand, sun, car
* Bus stop activities around the class. Enlarged photos, sticky notes, write down what comes up in your mind when you see the photos. Share with class.
* ESOL speaking strategies such as Running Dictation, Think, Pair, Share, Videos, Pictures, etc.
* Hands-on experiences - builds prior knowledge - then further develop that prior knowledge by building on it. e.g. Language experiences, cooking, weaving, technology etc.

Planning Stage: 
* Use digital tools - make it interesting!
* You could alternate the planning phase: in groups, with a buddy, with the teacher, on Popplet, etc
* Model and explain the value of planning - students to understand the WHY...
* Have lots of visuals.
* Practice the planning phase. Have three templates available e.g. brainstorms, KWL chart, 4 blocks on a page etc. Every day give a topic, and use one of the planning templates to practice planning. Alternate the templates. (They are writing without knowing that they are writing).

Drafting Stage: 
* Create a glossary
* Write a paragraph on I wonder, do a word search which the students created themselves, create a questions page, draw a picture and label, write amazing facts.
*These activities are short and sharp.
* Lots of visuals, maps, art, etc

Editing stage: 
* Adding detail especially extending vocab
* Highlight nouns in writing pieces - add an adjective (do these for a few days in a row during mini-workshops)
* Practice adding adjectives by having a picture e.g. of Bumble from Transformers - students to identify the noun (robot) and add adjectives (yellow, big, fast). Do these quick sharp activities often.
* Use exemplars of text - highlight adjectives

Proofreading stage:
* Students that struggle with reading, won't be able to use the dictionary. Rather teach them how to hear sounds in a word and record it. There are spelling 4 strategies
* The spelling framework requires students to: Say it, Hear it, Find it, Write it, and Use it (Use your spelling charts as a traffic light activity)
* Traffic light activities e.g have a picture with scrambled letters. Students identify what they hear first, second or last, etc
* Write down all the words you know with a specific sound - quick warm-up activity.
* What is the purpose of each punctuation? Not just naming them.
* Do Readers Theatre.  This will encourage fluency and identifying the use of punctuation.
* Look into Nessy
 * lots of mini-workshops (10min) on spelling and punctuation
* have visual checklists for students around punctuation

Publishing stage: 
What do you want to achieve with regards to your writing programme?
E.g. of what a term 1's writing might look like: (Not linked to weeks)

Recount

Describe

Choice

Quick Writing

Students might write 2 or 3 of each type through the term. They choose one of each type (their personal best) of writing to publish. These published pieces form your bases for your OTJ's. Don't publish all pieces - Just one of each type. 

What types of writing am I collating from term 1 to inform my planning for term 2? Samples of planning, drafting, pre-writing etc. Each is a sample. Don't just measure the outcome. Measure the process. 

* link writing to art. Students can write a caption about their art piece. 

* link writing to music - lyrics, how it makes you feel, etc

NB! Get feedback from students about your teaching. 

ESOL Strategies

I was so excited this week when one of my colleagues asked me for some examples of ESOL strategies, I decided to make a dashboard in order to make these amazing strategies easier accessible for our staff. I am hoping that this might encourage them to use these strategies to improve literacy in their classrooms.
ESOL Strategies

ALL - Progress with my teaching as inquiry

Where am I now with my inquiry? 

I have completed my scanning phase of my inquiry. I've collected data from last year, collected student, parent and teacher voice. I've looked at absenteeism, and observed behaviour in the classroom.
I have identified 6 boys that are reluctant writers. They depend a lot on their teachers as well as peers in the class. Although they were doing what was expected, it was on a very low level (kind of the bare minimum). They could not verbalise why they were doing it e.g. why did they highlight ideas that go together.  They struggled to say what good writing looks like. They all knew that if they get stuck they should ask 3 before me (the teacher), however, they did not really know who the "experts" in their class were.

My developing hunches are:
* Chromebooks for writing has an affect on their writing i.e. writing e-asttle with pen and paper rather than chrome, might cause  a lower result.
* Exemplars to show what good writing at year level should look like, is not
readily available, and perhaps students need to see the difference between
a year 1 and 6 level of word (unpacking the difference)
* How much student voice is seeked in the classroom and across the school on topics of the students interest?
* De constructing the planning stage with students. Do they understand why they plan, and how to plan by themselves?
* LI/SC - co constructed with the students to gain agency over their learning. And do they know how to check their own work against these SC?
* What are we, as teachers, doing in the pre-writing stage before we start planning for writing? How do we unpack the topics with our student?
* Are we focussing too much on non-fiction writing, which involves a lot of new facts for information writing?

Taking Action

• Know your learners - what are their interests?  What do they like to write about?
• Negotiables - chrome book, paper & pen, postiks & pen.  What can children do with chrome to create pieces of writing? Balance around how this might work with other paper activities.
• Unpack the writing process.
• Identified with students if writing done on chrome is really better than writing done on paper. Obtain writing samples - one on paper - one on chrome- on topics of their choice, compare and unpack.
• Unpack planning - why do we plan, different ways of planning - add as much detail than I can (without the support of a teacher or buddy) - look at finding information with tools that are available, e.g. books, posters, Google etc
• Unpack, what can I change in my writing to make it better - personalized checklist

I will look into Boys as Reluctant writers, I'm aware that one of the classes already use Game of Awesome as encouragement for writing. Therefore my research will be more into why are they reluctant, and what can we change in the classroom and school to get them excited.