Gail Loane - Writing PD

Staff Meeting - Gail Loane - Wednesday 24th August 2016

Andrew Jackson piece

- Use of the 5 senses

- Description - Factual

- No personal response/opinion

Leaf Description

The Leaf writing enlightened me to Set up meaningful literacy writing tasks, alongside effective models.

Framework for Lesson

Eco-literacy

- Connect with the simple

- What are the possibilities to get children quickly writing?

- Create a challenge for them e.g. try not to use 'I' or 'my'

Look at a piece of student writing and decide what can be improved/what needs to be worked on and then think about how this can be incorporated into your teaching.

Murray Gadd - Research on writing

What makes teachers effective? - Three most important are highlighted.

- Expectations - Vision of achievement - How is this communicated to the students?

- Learning Goals - What do teachers think about when they create goals for/with students?

- Learning Tasks - How are they set up? Specific tasks for specific learning.

- Direct instruction - Explicit teaching.

- Responding to students work - Feedback/feedforward - Is it clear?

- Motivating and challenging learners

- Organisation and management - Differentiation - If it is a whole-class lesson aim for 100% student engagement/need.

- Self-regulation - Actions the teachers take to give students a sense of ownership/responsibility.

Developing student agency - use of the book 'Choice Words'

- Learning intentions are too broad - stick to using a learning focus for each lesson.

Memoir - Model - Piano Rock by Gavin Bishop

Give background to hook the students in.

- Make them aware that there is a person behind the model.

Read for meaning - picture aids can be used to ensure 100% understanding from all students.

Use of visual contrast - use colouring pencils to colour for each paragraph - look at what colour each paragraph makes you feel.

Make students aware of the deliberate choices that author's make - Allow them to discover this - resonated with me

Pick one sentence for students to imitate, e.g. The creek, white with ice, had patches of black where someone before me had...

(white with ice = adjectival phrase)

Plan: Students to brainstorm 4 nouns e.g. window, duvet, light, floor.

- Come up with a full sentence before they move away to write independently.

Success Criteria: Include one sentence with a noun and a descriptor after the noun.

Ensure to teach all different types of writing:

- Shared

- Guided

- Independent

- Collaborative