Observing Literacy at Somerfield School

My visit to Somerfield School was both inspiring and grounding.

I meet with Year 1-2 teachers, and had these questions in mind:

* How is writing planned for student needs? 

What routines are in place? 

How is differentiation provided?

How do teachers collaborate?

Using assessment to plan groups, one teacher withdrew an extension group. Two other teachers worked collaboratively in one space; one doing shared / modelled writing while a second teacher took two focus groups (one after the other) on specific skills.

Students had clear success criteria for writing, annotated in each book. The criteria were also displayed in the room. Children were encouraged to work on just one goal at a time.

Questions and next steps for my team/myself:

* Would we benefit from using this model of teacher collaboration (2 teachers in one space) in future?

* How does our success criteria compare? Is it displayed in room? Am I referencing in feedback conversations?
* Can we use different text types (e.g. labelling, picture starters) to prompt reluctant writers? At present we focus on recounts.

   

* What writing instruction processes and strategies are being used? 

At my school, we are encouraging students to say and write their own stories, and use a phonics letter card to help find sounds. we are finding many of our new entrant students have little knowledge of letter sounds, and need lots of support as they learn them. Somerfield teachers were using glue-in and copy sentence starters, e.g. 

Student writing was displayed with pride in individual file books, using the sentence starters (I can, I am, I went etc).

There were lots of opportunities to practise writing during reading and writing time (when students weren't working with the teacher) - see below. Students wrote down reading book titles in their logs as writing mileage.

   

Questions/next steps:

* Discuss with team. Should we trial sentence starters one or two days per week to help students learn high frequency words more rapidly?

* Discuss with team. Should we include some of the writing motivators (above) in our programme? 

* After/before reading with me, have students write their book title in their log.

* How are teachers building students' phonics understanding ?

20mins was spent on phonics each day. Small groups worked with the teacher while others completed phonics activities e.g. games or art:

 

Other Inspirations:

Student work was clearly celebrated with lots of displays! I was impressed by the 'thinking out loud' and how much student leadership was shown in the maths display. I will be asking students to co-create our future maths display...watch this space!