The Lighthouse

One of the reasons I choose my inquiry to be based around picture books and media is because I am a big fan of them. I also feel as teachers, we need to be exposing students to books and media to help develop their writing ideas and skills.

This week I used the Lighthouse off the Literacy Shed. I am a big fan of the Literacy Shed ( and the Mathematics Shed)and love the range of animations in each shed. There are a number of different sheds to choose from and I have explored all of these sheds and never once been disappointed.

I didn't have a real reason why I decided on The Lighthouse ,it was more I have always liked this animation and I have wanted to use it with a class for a very long time.

This week has been quite difficult as I have been out of class all week and haven't actually taken my writing groups.
I have had to rely on feedback from the teachers taking my groups and photographic evidence. Below is what I had put in place for those who were covering my class.

One of the main concerns I had for my chosen four was the fact they lacked ideas to help get them started to write. Left to their own devices nearly all of them would sit there not knowing what to write. Which showed in the unaided writing task I gave them.

By using picture books or media, I hope to help develop their ideas. This week the plan was to deconstruct the film and develop a story map and word bank for students to use.

I am someone who believes that when you are writing you need to have material all around the room to help aide students to develop and create their own ideas. It can be very daunting (even for adults) to be asked to write about something without any help or guidance.

At the start of the week I gave them screen shots (Courtesy of Tom Silver) from the animation and the students had to discuss a plausible narrative for what might be happening. Talking is also a big thing I am into when it comes to writing. My theory is 'if they can't talk it they can't write it'. I have been a big fan of Talk for Writing which was the developed by Pie Corbett and supported by Julia Strong and incorporate a lot of his ideas into my own lessons.

After this, the students then watched the animation stopping at vital points so that I could ask them a few questions and we could discuss  and make predictions as to what they thought. ( I did take ideas  that were shared on the Literacy Shed site).

Children also brainstormed language to describe the setting using nouns, adjectives and adverbs.

We discussed possible outcomes as we neared the end of the animation as well.

I then allowed them to watch the animation all over again with interrupting them. After that we discussed anything new we could add to our working wall of vocabulary, ideas and thoughts.

Next students worked in mixed ability groups and using the screen shots story mapped each scene using phrase, vocabulary etc. Students also created speech bubbles (where appropriate) to write down the Lighthouse keeper's thoughts and utterances.

I modelled this for students by creating a mini guided writing of the first scene and then as a group we did a shared writing of the second screen shot. Although not quite shared writing as we were only adding in vocabulary, phrases similes, alliteration etc.  By doing this I wanted to understand the task but also to model an expectation I had on them for vocabulary choices.

Below is the first screen shot and the vocabulary and phrases I modelled for them. This would be used later in the week when they started to write their opening to the animation. I would do a shared writing with them and use a lot of the vocabulary I had collected. I would then expect them to 'magpie' at least three of my words or phrases.

 

Modelled Vocabulary.

 

Sea crashing against the rocks

Bright yellow lights that goes on for miles

Light that beckons the ships to safety

Jagged rocks standing to attention

Clouds tip toed across the black night

Illumination of the silver moon

Solitude lighthouse standing alone on the edge of a cliff.

Full moon

As with most planning, I tend to plan the first two days and see where we get. All the above took the whole week to complete. Next week I will continue to use this animation and begin to develop some writing.

Writing Inquiry Week One

As I embark on my first inquiry I have decided to record my findings here as I know that questions, queries and uncertainties can be answered. I am not sure how to approach this inquiry and what is the best way to record all the evidence, information and findings I come across so any advice will be appreciated.

The four students I have chosen are students are writing below the National Standards for their age. All but one is a year three student.

My year four student is writing at a level 1A (OTJ- Overall Teacher Judgment)  but it is not always consistent

All my year threes are writing at a 1P  (OTJ) depending on the day.

According to National Standards  in year 3 my students need to be doing this;

Students will independently write texts that are clearly directed to a particular audience. They will organise their texts according to a basic structure that meets their purpose for writing (for example, a story with a beginning, middle, and an end). These texts will include, when appropriate:

·         content, mostly relevant, that conveys several experiences, items of information, and/or ideas relating to a curriculum topic and that sometimes includes detail and/or comment

·         mainly simple and compound sentences that vary in their beginnings and lengths and in the simple conjunctions used

·         attempts at some complex sentences

·         some specific vocabulary that is appropriate to the content of the text.

By the end of year 4 they need to be able to;

Students will independently write texts, using language and a simple text structure that suit their audience and purpose (for example, when recounting, describing, narrating, reporting, or explaining). These texts will include, when appropriate:

·         content that is mostly relevant to the curriculum task, covers a range of ideas, experiences, or items of information, and often includes detail and/or comment supporting the main points

·         mainly simple and compound sentences that vary in their beginnings structures, and lengths and are mostly correct grammatically

·         attempts at complex sentences

·         words and phrases, in particular, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, that clearly convey ideas, experiences, or information.

Below is the unaided piece of writing I gave my students last week.

Year 4

Year 3

Year 3

Year 3

Slow Writing

Twitter has been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for once again it led me to a different way of approaching writing.  Anything about writing usually grabs my attention these days as for the first time in many years I had no answers as to why my class struggled with writing.

I had a class that orally produce wonderful ideas during shared writing but when it came to them independently producing their own work it was like pulling teeth. We had the vocabulary wall; I modelled sentences, used creative prompts, media etc. but the harder I seem to work the less engaged they became. The last thing I wanted to do was turn them off writing so I began to question what I could do. Thankfully a tweet from @redgierob  came just at the right time.

Slow writing is getting students to slow right down in order to think about their technique.  The idea is to get students to slow the hell down and approach each word, sentence and paragraph with love and attention. Obviously they’ll write less but what they do write will be beautifully wrought and finely honed’. David Didau 

Thankfully my class was already clued up on different types of literacy elements thanks to all the work we did on this during our poetry slam unit. Therefore I didn’t have to spend any extra time teaching them these concepts.

In our first lessons there were a few hiccups. Because it was set out as below, some of my students completely forgot everything I had taught them about a sentence and tried to write a sentence on one line! Once we got over that hurdle everything started to come together.

Sentence one must appeal to the senses.
Sentence two must use three adjectives.
Sentence three must start with an adverb.
Sentence four must contain a connective.
Sentence five must use exactly three words.
Sentence six must be a question.

I used some short films courtesy of The Literacy Shed (which I love!).  We used the Ghostly Shed as I knew it would grab my boy’s attention. The great thing about these films were that most were less than two minutes long and there was no dialogue meaning the students had to use the music and visual to ‘read’ the story.

I spent the week working on this and each day I would add six more different sentences so by the end of the week we had four different models up on our board. As my students became more confident in this process they began to mix the sentences around. Students also began to realize that there was usually a pattern to the six sentences and that it was quite easy to create their own.

What transpired was some amazing writing. Even better, I had students who usually struggled with writing now enjoying it and telling me how easy it was to write!