Our follow on session today began by finishing off our brainstorms about topics of interests and things we would like to write about. The students then highlighted the top three points from their brainstorm and shared these with the group. The purpose for this was to find out if their were any commonalities among the group. This was a neat part of the lesson, as the students discovered what their peers were interested in, as well as being able to share their interests with others. It was amazing to find that between all eight students (7 boys and 1 girl) and their three goals, there was at least one interest in common between them. The result being that the group were all keen on writing a narrative story that had plenty of adventure and excitement.
The next step involved recapping the structure of a narrative. Again, sharing our thoughts, having me give prompts by acting and drawing pictures and hangman, all helped add fun, whilst motivating the students to share their answers.
Next came the bouncing around of our ideas for our potential story. Many students were interested in writing stories about war which is very fitting as this term our context is on world war 1 and the ANZAC's. Using this context as our starting point, students then worked in pairs. They were given sticky notes and asked to jot down either potential characters or settings. They then shared these with one another. This saw the voices in the group become louder, and the smiles on faces become larger, as the students built on each others ideas to come up with a brilliant, exciting story which I will write up for them tomorrow as I model planning.
The mood and energy within the group today was electric. We were all so excited that we couldn't sit still. Students were almost jumping out of their seats to add ideas for our story. To see a simple individual brainstorm, develop into an exciting, captivating story idea that every member of the group, (me included) were not only involved in, but can't wait to begin writing, has made all the extra work, blogging, planning, finding resources, doing professional readings etc totally worth while.
What really made me thrilled today was seeing a group of students who constantly struggle in writing, are reluctant writers, and often lack confidence when it comes to writing; beam with excitement and be the envy of the rest of the class who were onlooking with gloomy faces wishing they were apart of my ALL writing group.
From what I have gathered through my research so far, the first step in creating successful writers is to firstly get students engaged. Secondly its about getting students ideas out and expanding on them. Somehow today this all happened. Whether it was because each group member felt safe to contribute their ideas, or because they weren't expected to write much or complete a graphic organiser for a story plan, I'm not sure. The one thing I am sure of is just how powerful orally sharing ideas together as a group is, because what I witnessed today was brilliant. To see a group of eight reluctant, struggling writers work together by taking the theme of war and turn it into a captivating story idea which includes adventure, magic, and time travelling, was amazing. This story now has every single member of the group (and probably the rest of the class) eager for writing tomorrow. We can't wait to finish planning our ideas in detail and begin writing, which goes to show I am on the right track so far.
My next question for my inquiry however, is What can I do to get students detailed ideas that have been give orally, into their writing books with the same amount of detail?
Below are some of the groups feedback about how they thought today's writing session went:
No comments:
Post a Comment