Changing Direction

On a recent visit to Stonefields school in Auckland, I had the opportunity to discover new or alternative ways of teaching and learning and reflect on both my own and my teams own practices and pedagogy.

The trip reminded me of what I believe in with one of the most prominent things being learner agency. Back to last years inquiry!  What is new to me about this is the term of Assessment Capable Students. This is not new but it reinvigorated my thinking that if the kids can lead their learning and assess their own learning then I feel very confident that we can get accelerated growth from all students.

So my inquiry is shifting slightly to trying to figure out how to create Assessment Capable students in literacy. How can I get my student to buy into this and provide evidence on their own to show what they can do? My dilemma is that teachers struggle to understand writing and all of its complexities, so how am I going to get students to do this as well?

Everything I have discovered this year has been fantastic and has helped shape organisation of learning and lessons as well as developing strong relationships with my target kids. However, the acceleration has not been enough.

So, how can I create assessment capable students? How will this impact on their learning in literacy?

Purpose - A reading of interest

One thing I have struggled with is getting out of the mindset of writing genre all of the time. This article really resonated with me as it reinforces what I see with my target students. When writing for an authentic purpose there is less fight, frustration, and feeling of why do we need to. They buy into it and if anything need some holding back to make sure they are on the right track before rushing.

It has hit home that the skills for writing are transferable across genres and it is more a change in language features that are used to to make sure the writing is effective for the purpose at hand.

Exploring Elaboration

From a while back but a good reflection for me on what goes on with the boys.

Term 2 Summary and Next Steps for Term 3

Term 2:

Some reflections I have made throughout the term.

Link to Target Group Planning Doc

What teacher practice made an impact on my writers writing?

• Short sharp lessons of 10-15 minutes
• Gathering vocab to use in writing and use to help with ideas
• Shared planning 
• Writing progressions helped with a focus/goal and then accountability in including this in their writing
• Reading to improve knowledge before writing
• Reading to unpack writing techniques
• Variety

Where to next?

• Continue with what works above. Anne suggested to not rush onto the next thing all of the time. Embed and build confidence in the boys feelings towards writing. Work towards their independence and less reliance on teacher support.
• Sentence Structure work: This is a need identified through e-asttle and observations in class. The question is, how do I tweak my current practice or develop new strategies for teaching this as I have taught it a lot over the years. The kids have also been taught this a lot over the years so why hasn't it sunk in yet?
• I do think I haven't explored the link between reading and writing in my previous years. This is in terms of identifying sentence structures in others writing and pulling this out of texts we read. My teaching has relied upon my modelling and then the kids practicing the techniques. I have seen the impact reading has had on ideas, so now I think I need to translate this into improving the kids sentence structures.

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.

Gaining Independence

So we have been repeating the process in term 3 of preloading, gathering key words and phrases, planning together and then writing in small bursts. This has all been modelled and led by myself with students input slowly increasing. My target students are however still very reliant on me as a safety net. 

So my next step as discussed with Anne is to slowly phase myself out of the process and scaffold the boys into being able to do each of these steps by themselves. I have introduced reciprocal writing into some lessons. One student leads the process and follows a script which includes prompts for what the boys need to do throughout the lesson. I am still there for support but mostly as a member of the group doing as I am directed.

The first session I tried this and I had to step in a lot for behavioural reminders, as it was a bit strange for the group to be led by one of their own. When it came to the task though (reading and recording vocab) the boys did this easily as we have had a lot of practice.

In the second session things ran a bit more smoothly as I introduced sharing tokens (4 each) that were used when someone had something to share or say. I had introduced this earlier in the day. This allowed the session being led by a student to flow nicely and the boys all completed the task. Some said we could do that by ourselves, I don't really need someone to tell me. Others said that they liked hearing others words and ideas so wouldn't want to do this on their own yet.

This was all pleasing to hear as it shows that some of the boys are getting how to record ideas and use this to write. 

One of the boys just does it by himself now which is great. He thrives on factual pieces so I am interested to see if he can translate this to more creative types of writing.

What did I do? 
- I implemented a reciprocal writing process to help create independence in the boys writing
What impact did this have? 
- It allowed the boys to go through the process on their own and believe that they are capable of doing it without me.
Where to next?
- Some of the boys know how to write with quality in small bursts, but forget about quality and our learning or ??? when writing independently.
- Create an environment or motivation to want to think carefully about how they write every time.

How do we develop our ideas?

The focus for my inquiry is to improve my students confidence by helping them to develop their ideas when writing.

So how do I do this?

Through discussions with Ann Grady, Sandy Harrop and my team, the importance of linking reading and writing has jumped out. If the students have no knowledge of a topic how can I expect them to have ideas to write about.

I/we will:

• Build our knowledge: Incorporating a second teaching session for my target group after lunch we will read about the topic. Mining for example.
• The students will create a word bank from this reading to use when they write.
• We will create a shared plan for writing using the word bank.

How did it go?

• The boys are writing more and better quality with a shared plan to follow.
• when a shared plan is created the boys feed back that they better understood what to write about and how to structure it.
• The boys liked not writing for writing. They loved reading about what they would be writing about.
• Using word bank - boys feedback is they like it for ideas and words - when they see the words it reminds them of different ideas that they can use.
• The boys feel like they know what to write about when reading about a topic precedes the writing.

Next steps:

• So I will continue to preload knowledge by reading before writing.
• Continue creating word banks for the boys to use.
• Begin scaffolding the boys into planning for themselves and creating the word banks for themselves.

A side note:

• I am still thinking genre with writing and often the purpose for writing is forced from the writing and the boys don't always engage with what they are asked to do because of this.