Inquiry Writing Focus - Week 3 Reflections

This week i found that things flowed even smoother during group rotations due to the students being used to the routines and structure of the lessons that we have had for the couple of weeks.  The inquiry group continued their narrative stories using the planning template they created in their books discussed in my reflection last week.  We also started our new genre focus this week exposition writing.  The whole class wrote a sample on the topic ‘all Vardon School students must now wear a uniform to school every day’.   The students then had the opportunity to assess their samples against the success criteria

These are my observations or thoughts about this group from the week:

• ·         The template the inquiry group created was useful and they could write this with little discussion and motivation from me – they could create their own ideas to add to this without as much discussion needed as the previous time. 
• ·         The template that they created didn’t have as much detail as the previous plan they did for the soccer ball story.  This could be either because the extra detail icons weren’t on their page as it was on the previous plan and/or because we didn’t spend as much time talking about their plan like we did last time.
• ·         All four students used this template structure to create a plan for the planning part of their exposition sample.  This is exactly what i wanted, for these students to have a template they felt confident using when they are required to write a sample, or a piece of writing and a template is not provided for them to use.  However . . . . this wasn’t quite the right writing genre to use this template for i.e. there’s not setting in an exposition so you don’t need to plan for it, but they’re getting the idea and giving it a go now which is awesome to see!
• ·         The boys are making good progress with experimenting with new ways to add interest with their writing and writing for longer periods of time, but the girls are still at a standstill.  They take a very long time to get started and having taken many risks at all with trying new things in their writing to add interest.  I know one of the reasons they are at a standstill is because they find it really hard to come up with ideas.  They can plan out what will happen at each point of the story (the intro, the problem, the solution and the conclusion), but find it hard to add in the bits in between to connect all these ideas together.   I think the fact they sit together could be part of the problem too as they then kind of feed off each other negative vib about being stuck and having no ideas.  It will be interesting to see how these girls fair with their writing during expositions, as being a factual piece of writing, they may find these easier to write and to add details to.
• ·         Tickled pink and grow for green is going really well, having the kids talk about their successes and justifying their reasons and really positive.