Inquiry Writing Focus - Week 1 reflections

This week we started our inquiry project throughout the senior syndicate.  We started the inquiry by gathering data on these students we thought we would have in our inquiry group, but also asked the whole class to complete the sample in case the children we thought we would be using for the group weren’t actually the ones we most needed to target.  Based on what the four students i had previously thought would be the best for my inquiry had produced in the sample, i am happy to work with these four.  See my notes in the post below to see what they can do successfully, and my ideas for the things i think they need to master in order to be able to create writing that has more depth and detail – effectively pushing them from a good level 2 to at least a basic level 3 writer. 

My plan was to meet with my group for the last four sessions of the week – each day building on the previous day, and building on the WALT I had decided for the group which was ‘to add depth and description to my writing’.  Boy was it a struggle!  I found that the way i had structured my 45minute writing session just couldn’t realistically fit in a warm up and two group rotations.  My focus of course this term is for the inquiry group which i have called the ‘personifications’, but even planning to have 15 minutes with them just doesn’t feel anywhere near enough time to really explore the things that i feel they need to work on.  I felt so rushed and like i was motoring through all i had planned to get through, doing none of my activities any justice at all, and coming off like a bit of a grump.  I love teaching writing, and this structure felt like I was doing myself and my students a severe dis-service.  Something has to change.   I don’t want to focus only on the inquiry group as my other students have needs, and i am not willing to give away my warm up time as i feel that this is a time where i can do some great hotspot activities which help to achieve some of the goals students have from their reports.  So am at a bit of a cross roads.  Do i go to whole class teaching and take the personifications?  Effectively only having two groups?  But then, this would be very frustrating for my top group who don’t need step by step instructions, and need the chance to meet with me to see ways that can extend their ability that is to far advanced for the rest of the class!  What to do, what to do!!!!?????  Any ideas???  I’ve decided that now that most groups are up and writing i will trial having the separate groups for another week and then will reflect on how this goes at the end of the week.  We have one more week of narrative writing after this, so may change my approach for our Expositions writing focus.

Sweet Tweets - Restorative Practise Activity

This term I will be undertaking a ‘sweet tweet’ community circle task.  I wanted to build on the person outline task we did in term 1 in our learning logs to further strengthen our class community and to build our class culture even more.  The person outline task we did during the first weeks of this year involved us each writing a special message to each class member around their person outline in their learning logs.  This helped to break the ice, and get each of us to think about each member in our new class and appreciate what we knew about them then.  I really found this task such a powerful activity as my students were buzzing after they read all of these short messages and it really helped each student to feel welcome in the class.

This term I wanted to do something similar as we are about half way through the year, and we now know more about each other.  So I was lucky enough to purchase some ‘sweet tweet’ templates from a resource store in America and will be doing this with my class over the first 4 weeks of term.  Each student will need to choose one classmate a day to observe and think about.  Their exit pass for each day is to have written a sweet message for that classmate.  This will be recorded with their initials in the grid on the cube under the board.

My learning intention with this activity is:

• To notice the great things about each of the members of our class
• Show appreciation for the things that our class mates do and say
• Understand why it is important to tell other what we appreciate about them
• Feel a sense of belonging to our class community
•  Everyone getting that feel good feeling upon reading their messages from others

During our first community circle for week 1, we will be discussing this and the purpose of the task.  We will also be discussing what kinds of things we will be looking for in our class mates, (linking these into our 4R’s and TRUMP’s etc) and how we need to be specific– as i don’t want messages like ‘you are nice’ etc.  Children will be encouraged to write up ideas on paper for the board.  Come check it out in Room 14 and have a chat about how it’s going with a member of our class.

Our Class Assembly 2014

On the last day of term was our class assembly. We had a great time sharing our learning for the term about space! Watch the video below to see out performance. A big 'Thank you' to Leah's granddad for videoing this for us :)