Charlotte Verity Professional Learning (School Based)

Progress to date One student may achieve the standard for After One Year at school. The other children are working at a 1B level. However, the group have made huge personal steps: * All students now plan and start their stories independently. * 2 of the students include initial and end sounds in words. 3 children consistently use initial, middle and end sounds * 4 students write and re-read their stories independently. 3 make corrections as they re-read.  * 3 of the children include conjunctions, and consistently write 3 or more sentences.  What remains challenging? Letter formation causes 2 students to work very slowly (and they see writing as physically taxing). Developing letter formation causes two other children to have problems when re-reading their work. The group would benefit from correct high frequency word spelling, and could add more details to their responses.  My next steps as a teacher * Continue to offer writing experience activities in rea...

Feedback and Next Step Planning for Writing Instruction WHAT TEACHERS AT BECKENHAM ARE GENERALLY DOING WELL WHERE AM I AT WITH THIS TEACHING STRATEGY? Analysing students’ writing and identifying teaching points Continue to do, especially for more advanced writers. For these students, we could look at using varied sentence starts; using speech; wow words; adding details; using varied sentence structures. Being clear about what you want students to do (task) and achieve (goal) within the lesson Picture success criteria, suggested by Murray, has been brilliant for this. Give strong and explicit direct instruction through active modelling Continue to be clear on the goal, task and success criteria Taught or reinforcing skills in context (i.e. using students’ work and ideas) Using students work in modelling book is highly engaging and purposeful Using questioning and prompt...

Background: observing colleague with 4 students, who have been at school for two terms. Modelling focused on using sound words (roar, crash etc) and the picture book, Demolition , as stimulus. My colleague was interested in helping the children add detail to stories and use think alouds . Students all used sound words, used finger spaces, were actively re-reading and sounding out words. Some children also added detail. There was a positive climate; colleague praising students' effort throughout; writing was truly  co-constructed  between students and teacher ( kids encouraged to have a go!). There was explicit teaching, repeated throughout modelling e.g. stretching out words 'like chewing gum' and modelling knowing/looking words. Strengths colleague demonstrated / Next steps for me: * Clear reading-writing links made by teacher, often using questions, 'What would our readers want to know?' 'How should we read it?' * Model varied starts for sent...

Progress so far One student is on track to achieve standard.  Three of the five students are now saying, writing and re-reading as they write. Four of the five include initial, middle and end sounds in their words. All children will aide ideas with teacher prompting/questioning. Three of the five children include spaces in their work, and two include full-stops. My next steps as a teacher * Continue to offer writing experience activities in reading and writing to build formation - tracing, bead threading, write around the room, labelling, list writing * Sent home tracing booklets * Trial small group teaching for the students most at risk - using Early Words resources - AA, TP, IG, KRL, RMC, LR * Modelled sessions on using spelling aides in the room, and on capital letters * Continue to have students say their story and then re-read to self and to me * Have clear purposed based writing e.g. to make a book, a letter etc * Try sharing progress (written vocabular...

As part of my current University study around Curriculum Leadership, I have conducted an action research project on my mentoring strategies. The research involved a literature review of writing strategies for NE children, and two conversations with a colleague. The colleague and I collaborate on planning and teaching our classes. I was particularly interested in finding out her thoughts on what helps our students: * Engage in writing * Develop independence in writing Our conversations and the literature review helped me to realise that our N.E. students most need: * Writing experience activities to build fine motor strength and letter formation * Purposeful tasks, to give them both the motivation to write, and to help them realise the varied uses of writing in their lives. Examples that we discussed and have set up included letter writing, labelling, writing / copying environmental print, scaffolded sentences and mini-books * Engaging tasks, relating to their interests * Qu...

Readers interpret and decipher a message.  Writers construct a message for an audience.  Letters and words (and picture!) are used to represent these messages.  Children who practise writing will be stronger in reading, and vice versa. Children who read more often generally have stronger writing vocabulary and greater syntactic control in writing   than those who read less.  Reading and writing = needs to be taught separately during Years 1-3, but can be integrated through concepts/topics/inquiry in upper years. Task: Read Voices in the Park by Anthony Brown...how would you describe the characters? e.g. Mother = snobbish; affluent; judgemental, rigid.... How does Brown convey this impression?  * Through word choice - e.g. 'I shooed it off';         'That horrible dog...';        '"Sit," I said to Charles.'  * Pictures  e.g. the background of the second page         * Differ...

I worked with a small group of writers, with Murray and Rowena Barker (level leader) observing.  The group includes lower - middle ability NE writers. All students are identifying the first sound of each word, and can say their story with support. They are working on using middle and end sounds in words; using knowing / looking words; re-reading their work; adding details & letter formation. We were revisiting descriptive pieces about our families.  I was interested in Murray's feedback on: * My use of feedback for each child * How I might help the students develop more independence in their writing * How can I support those with high needs (specifically fine motor and phonics skills)  Feedback from Murray Strengths (keep doing this): * One to one conversations and questions to help children add details * Noticing what students are doing well * Giving feedback to each child Next Steps Suggested by Murray:  * Use think alouds and modelling in every ...