Wednesday 31 May 2023
Tuesday 30 May 2023
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.
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.
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