SOLO Description collectors adapted

Our students like to use sheets to gather ideas and they are a great way to scaffold writing by gathering word banks and descripitve tools for students to refer back to.

This is what our initial effort looked like. As you can see, it clarifies what adjectives and adverbs are but also illicits deeper thinking and wonderings.  We have not managed to unpack the 'Analogy' section to develop effective metaphores and similes but will use that next term. This Desciption Collector resulted in 'Slow writing' and 5 Sentence Challenge responses.  It is a tool to feed any type of written response.

The Year 1-2 teacher came for a visit and we decided it should be simplified for them.  She had tried a version of it in her class and already had a student independently apply the 'see, think, wonder' to his writing on the following day.

Writing via Twitter

On Wednesdays we join in the Kidsedchat Twitter sessions with kids from all over New Zealand.  This week we tweeted about what makes a good teacher.  We made lots of great tweets and shared our KidsAKO workshops.  Check out who won 'Tweet of the Week'!

This is a way to get the children writing for a purpose, with a real audience and accountability to get it right.  We tend to prepare a tweet on a form, giving 140 character spaces, which can be edited before the session.  Any subsequent response tweets need to be written at the time and quickly checked by the teacher.  While we used #kidsedchatnz hashtag at the start, this keeps trending due to the number of children responding and was hit by spammers.  We now have a list and only the tweets from people on the list can be seen.  To join that list of #kidsedchatnz then visit this website and the co-ordinator will add you.  http://kidsedchatnz.blogspot.co.nz 

Ariki reflection Term 3

In scanning through all to posts on this blog to share my progress since our first presentation, it is clear how far we have come and how much we have achieved in regards to increasing both the qantity and quality of writing within the class!

Personal blogging has taken off and there is no better illustration of this than students posting 19 separate posts on their personal blogs in one day.  The perfect example is Josh D who would never have written at home for fun and struggled to write at school.  In the last 10 days, he has made five posts from home, often getting his elder brother to help him.  This elder brother is not keen on writing at school either but they are enjoying the challenge of his personal blog.  Josh D's Blog

This, and the discussion at the Ariki presentation, brings up a few next steps to focus on for the remainder of the term.

Student Blogging:
1.  Give students more time for personal blogging in class.
2.  Draw attention to and celebrate student blogging within the class.
3.  Identify needs and teach writing workshops through student blogs.
4.  Promote student writing through Twitter more aggressively to attract visitors and comments.
5.  Unpack student comments, revisit and edit using success criteria to make them more effective.

AKO: Student's teaching students:
1.  Get students to identify something they are good at.
2.  Unpack and structure a workshop for KidsAKO.
3.  Test and adapt student workshop planning.
4.  Unpack the success criteria of instructions and commment on Weedons writing.
5.  Interact with Weedons around writing challenges.

It is times like this morning that make me smile, when a reluctant writer comes in before school and asks if I have seen the post he put up on his blog from home last night - three days in a row!

Personal student blogging takes off!

On June 10th four children got their own student blogs then a further three became bloggers a couple of days later.  In four days they published 42 posts, received and made 110 comments and started 13 further drafts.  While this keeps me on my toes with checking and moderating, it is a phenomenal effort of self motivation within student writing.

Kidblog - please link here.

Every post needs to be moderated by the teacher and rather than proceeding through the editing process behind the scene, I am posting work before it is of publishing level.  This is to allow comments of the readers to suggest the next steps for editing.

Points to celebrate:
More writing is being done - even from home.
Children are actively supporting the next steps suggestions for editing through comments.
I am just waiting for the bloggers to go back an make the suggested changes!

Click on the images for a closer view.

This is the final edited copy of Lachie's writing.

The whistle blew.  We’re off.

Josh passed me the ball. I was running like a leopard. There was a mud puddle as big as a swimming pool.  I went right through it and then I slipped. The ball went into outer space.  I got back up and then the ball came down as fast as an asteroid. Luckily I caught  it,  then I ran off as fast as I could.  Suddenly another puddle was right in front of the try line  and I was thinking should I pass it. No don’t pass it just score it. So I ran,  I skidded and scored!

Access to blog posting

It takes too long to get the whole class through drafting, editing and publishing a piece and so we are in Week 4 without any writing having been published on the writing blog which defeats the whole purpose of encouraging effective comments for further editing.

Three students have started to use the Blogger Tool during Daily 5 Work on Writing and this is proving popular.

Introducing a small number of students to having their own blog will give opportunity for posting writing as a home-learning activity rather than e-mailing and getting the teacher to post it. This will allow them to write on-line and access their incomplete work from anywhere and anytime.