Teaching as Inquiry: Writing 2017

TEACHING AS INQUIRY: WRITING 

Focusing Inquiry What is important given where my students are at?

I have chosen to focus on three students in writing. A full description of their current development can be found here.

Teaching Inquiry What strategies (evidence-based) are most likely to help my students learn? * Providing rich motivations * Giving students audiences/platforms for sharing their writing (wall, blog, sharing with other teachers) * Writing criteria (visual) and explicit feedback (verbal) * Individual modelling, prompting, praise and questioning

Teaching & Reflection - (Action)

Term 1 The Baseline Situation * Variation in writing stimulus and topics engaged students * Modelling was kept short, but didn't engage all students. How can I increase involvement during modelling? * We did lots of writing about ourselves: favourite playground, a family member * Students loved writing a 'What am I?' lift the flap piece * Independent writing with teacher feedback every second day has been more effective than grouping. Children like having the choice to stay with teacher if they need more support to begin * Attitudinal data shows that children are unclear of what writing involves - most talk of only picture plans, fullstops and neat letters. NEXT STEPS * Continue to look for and provide ways to share writing: in our modelling, displaying in class, displaying elsewhere, sharing with other classes/teachers. * Use whiteboards at times during modelling so all can participate in spelling words etc. * Explicit instruction around writing criteria and short, simple examples/modelling. Term 2 What has changed for the students?  Children are more engaged and writing longer pieces. They are all now proud to share their work with me and others. All are now re-reading their work and adding depth (speech/questions and other more advanced writing techniques; compound sentences; punctuation for some children).  Perhaps the best development is that all children reported feeling happy during writing, and one mentioned she liked learning during writing. The children suggested they would like to get better at full-stops, maths or spelling, which highlights that we need to explore writing criteria/what great writer's do in future. Exemplars of student work may help with this.  What did I change in my teaching? * Continued variation in writing stimulus and topics to engage students: reader's theatre; writing about animals; science based writing.  * Modelling is now very short. Often I will run a short explanation of the writing topic, provide an example and then get the children to start their work. Other times we do a short, shared sentence with one focus.  * Using student samples, I have established a list of common next steps and started running small writing workshops around specific skills/techniques e.g. using varied sentence starts.  * Using student work as a teaching exemplar. * Sharing students' work with home. * Having high expectations and following up with each child daily after their writing. What is my next step as a proactive teacher?  Goals:  1. Continue to support children to be engaged and motivated writers.  2. Help children to develop more advanced writing skills, in line with 1.3. * Continue to look for and provide ways to share writing: 1. In modelling/whole class. 2. With home. 3. in team blog. 4. Consider exploring a web based story publisher/website for kids writing * Teach self-assessment? This would require using writing criteria and agreeance with collaborative team. * Continue with varied and engaging writing stimulus. * Writing workshops, by collaborating with two other teachers.  * High quality samples of writing, e.g. use examples from the Year 3-4 team. * Buddy sharing and editing/giving feedback. Term 3 Click to view: Observation  by Team Leader What has changed for the students?  The children are more aware of the criteria for quality writing, perhaps through the use of our 'steps for learning in writing' (a list of the essential writing skills for 1a, created by our team this term). They are more engaged thanks to collaboration, and being able to work with different teachers and peers.  What did I change in my teaching? * Continued variation in writing stimulus with teaching partner. * Providing for peer-sharing daily.  * Using students' work in modelling.  * Intentional modelling of re-reading, punctuation and using varied adjectives/verbs. * Children now have exposure to two teachers. * Intentionally teaching children how to plan using a storyboard. * Developing and teaching the 'steps for writing' criteria What is my next step as a proactive teacher?  Goals:  1. Continue to support children to be engaged and motivated writers.  2. Help children to develop more advanced writing skills, in line with 1.3. * Students to peer-share and give feedback daily.  * Daily spelling practise (Essential List words).  * Use of high quality exemplars (ideally from the class) in modelling. * Continue with varied and engaging writing stimulus. * Intentional instruction: sentence punctuation, writing features (similes) and varied sentence types (simple, compound, complex) in teacher workshops. * Collaborative teaching, so that students have exposure to two teachers with similar expectations. * Daily phonics programme, based on assessed needs.

Questions for refection: What went well? What does the data say? What was challenging? What has changed? What is my next step as a proactive teacher? What and how might research, guidance from colleagues or student voice help me develop my practise? How will I sustain the effective practices? What’s my new inquiry focus? What new goals do I want to set?