Student Agency - Writing Goal!

My next step with my Target Group is to develop Accountability and Student Agency - We will begin to explore the Writing Progression rubrics and where their writing fits on these.

I stated in my last post that my target group work well when directed by myself but they lack the desire or motivation to try their best (care) every time including when writing independently.

I introduced this rubric to the group. We had explored this earlier in the year when unpacking 'the teacher words we don't get'. We explored the meaning of elaboration and what this looks like in writing. So when we came back to this it wasn't a big shock or intimidating.

We began by looking at others writing and finding out what a year 5 (rubric score 4) piece looked like and included. The boys enjoyed this as it built on existing knowledge from previous lessons, however they soon tired of looking at others work. After discussing the importance of including both questions and senses in their piece I sent them off to write a creative piece using an image prompt. 

The following day I printed these off and they had the task of highlighting where they had elaborated in their writing. It was a lightbulb moment for some of them as they realised that they often either only included their senses or answered the questions but not both. We did the same session the next day but swapped pieces so that they were marking a friends work. They enjoyed this again and were able to identify the aspects that were elaborated much more easily. 

Again they did respond that they would rather mark their own work. They also all asked if they could go off and write another piece so that they could show that they can include both types of elaboration. I found this interesting and asked them why they couldn't just elaborate the existing pieces we had just looked at. 'Na, we've finished these', was the reply! Something for us to explore moving forward.

On a side note, I asked they boys how they felt about sharing their writing with others, as this was something that earlier in the year they had said they didn't feel comfortable with. They all smiled and said they really enjoyed it and want to do it more regularly. Nice!

Next steps:

- Continue to refer to the rubric and demonstrate elaboration in their writing consistently.

- Continue pulling apart their writing and marking each others work against the rubric.

- Explore what complexity looks like and learn to include this.

- Sentence structure is an issue that needs some focus next. This fits nicely with re-crafting and editing our piece which they seem to think is not possible. The first draft is the final draft apparently.