Team Leader Observation - Writing

Rowena Barker, my team leader, is highly experienced in literacy. I was excited to come and have her watch my writing lesson. 
Notes: 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxdNc5F9bYO1bE1SRDN3WjVmY28

Appraiser Observing	Rowena Barker	Observation Date	4th April 2016
Teacher	Charlotte Verity	Observation Time	10.50-11.35
Topic being taught	Writing with Target writers (LC, AA, AVV, TP, RMC, KR)
The specific area of my practice / a specific strategy I am trying to implement, that I would like data about or feedback in from the observation: to use deliberate acts of teaching (modelling, prompting, questioning) to support target students to say, hear and identify letter sounds in writing.
Lesson Focus: I will also provide a sentence starter ‘I went’ to scaffold students. I will model writing a sentence, and ask students to help me to say, hear and identify letter sounds. I would love Rowena to give feedback on:          Is my guidance/ modelling and feedback to students clear? Do children understand?          Does each child have approx the same amount of teacher time?         Are there any other prompts/strategies I could use that would benefit children?
Rowena’s Feedback – Key Points:          ‘I went’ sentence starter on a post it note was a good scaffold for target children (higher needs writers)          Positive use of modelling and shared story, including mention of success criteria          Phonics sessions already in place in my planning are helping children Next Steps ·        Place Writing criteria on jelly bean table, to reference during teacher focus group ·        During modelling, ask students to say, hear and write the sounds on a whiteboard ·        Put lines in for children after they have said their story – this encourages spacing and supports memory ·        Expand deliberate acts of teaching by using think aloud…”this is what I do when I need to find ‘the’” ·        For more advanced writers – give children a counter for spacing & use word fluency tasks What I have done since… I am using think alouds much more in class, which I’m finding is helping target writers’ confidence and giving the scaffold they need. For more advanced writers, I’m running word fluency e.g. giving feedback with highlighters, and yellow highlighting a target word for them to practise using look/say/write/cover/check. I am continuing to use the sentence starter to support target writers. I’ve also made more copies of the writing criteria for use with groups. I will talk with my team about the possibility of updating our success criteria (in the back of writing books) to match the Murray Gadd criteria that we are using during our modelling.