Building our literary culture: Staff Only Day Book Club, January 2024

 Book Club - Teacher only day, 31st Jan 2024

We are building our literary culture by sharing some current favourite reads and examples of quality writing. Thanks everyone for your thoughtful and entertaining contributions.

Beth’s pick.
Also, The Midnight Library  by Matt Haig
Recommended by Carl. Also, HP Lovecraft Investigations (BBC Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts and other platforms)	Recommended by Suzanne
Recommended by Kate. Plus Sand Talk  by Tyson Yunkaporta (John referred to this.).	Recommended by Kirsten
Recommended by Rose.	Recommended by Jacqueline
Recommended by Hayley.	Mary Oliver, A Summer Day Mary Oliver, Sleeping in the Forest Recommended by Cloe

Purpose of Seesaw

 

WBS RANGI AND PAPA Kura Ahurea

 

Writing PLD 2023, session 5: Feedback and Conferencing

In this session, we explored how to make the most of feedback and conferencing. Dylan Wiliam stresses the importance of forming positive working relationships with students. This can help us to judge when, and how far, to push the challenge. Feedback should be focussed on building the student's own capacity for critical thought: they need to understand why you're suggesting something and engage in 'detective work' to become effective editors of their own writing.

We also considered Helen Walls' 30 second conferencing approach, which offers a way to connect with every student on a daily basis. This consists of specific praise including recognition of effort e.g. 'I can see that you have been trying to add finger spaces and have done it most of the time'. Alongside this, a next step (one piece of advice) that is recorded in the child's book.

Providing written feedback was also part of our discussion: how much and how (especially for our younger students).

We also revisited resources for determining progression, next steps and goal setting. These are included in the attached slides.

We agreed that the ingredients for effective feedback are:

• One bit of feedback at a time related to the goal of the session. 

• Goal is connected to the planning

• Planning is connected to the needs of the kids.  

• Praise EFFORT 

• Connect - Relationships 

• Kids ownership - respond to feedback or symbols 

• The style of feedback - oral or written or pic - must match individual needs 

• Above all, feedback should propel students forward to the next step (future focussed).

As a next step, we would like to consider whether we can introduce more continuity across spaces for how written feedback is given (for example, use of colours, symbols, language).

Writing PLD 2023, session 4: 'nuts and bolts'

Before this session, we read and reflected on two articles by Dr Helen Walls.

• Effective writing instruction in years 3-8

• Effective writing instruction in the junior primary years, Dr Helen Walls

Taking The Simple View of Writing as a starting point, Helen Walls elaborates on each key writing skills: Transcription, Text Generation, Executive Function.

We agreed that the implications for us when planning writing sessions are:

• Working memory is a challenge for many of our writers, especially priority learners (for example, letter formation may not be automatic).
• The importance of practising things correctly so as to avoid establishing incorrect neural networks (habits).
• Lesson design: what are you focussing on? Less is more and learning can be scaffolded so as to lighten the cognitive load in some areas, allowing focus on other skills.
• Spelling patterns: what resources are we using?
• Grammar: how much?
• Use of models and exemplars (including children's work): this is what my writing could look like.

In our phase groups, we looked at what we are doing to support children in each of the three key areas. What's working well now? What else could we try or which areas need a boost (E.B.I)?

Mahutonga/Matariki

Tautoru

Autahi

Writing PLD Session 3: non-fiction structures for writing

In the third Writing PLD session in this series, we shared structures for non-fiction writing.

The Simple View of Writing (Berninger et al, 2002) reminds us of the cognitive load involved in writing: children must simultaneously generate text, transcribe it, and monitor this activity (executive function).

We shared templates, tools and structures that can be used to assist our students in planning and writing different kinds of non-fiction texts. These tools support idea generation and executive function. They help our students to organise information so that they can plan and structure their writing effectively. As they write, these tools can be used as resources for checking that all information is included, in the right order. They can also be used to help with reviewing and editing writing.

We shared writing structures that can be used for writers at different ages and stages. 

These can be found in this attached slideshow.

Writing PLD 2: using tools to structure our narrative writing

 

This PLD session builds on our previous exploration of how we use great text models to improve children's own writing.

Focussing on narrative writing, we examined how structural tools and frameworks have a dual purpose: to help us to unpick how stories are constructed and as a guide to building narratives of our own.

Writing is a complicated activity in which children are using several different skills at the same time. We considered how structural tools can help to lighten the cognitive load for writers, enabling them to focus on composition, content or language choices.

Examples: applying structural analysis tools to fairytales.

We agreed that, as with maths or science, it is important for us to find the through lines in our teaching across our different classrooms. This way, children can build on their knowledge as they progress through the school. Using a common language for discussing text features is part of this.

We are keen to find a separate opportunity to explore similar tools for analysing and writing non-fiction texts.

The supporting slideshow can be found here:

Writing PLD 2