ALL - What's working? What's not!

Now that I have completed six weeks of the ALL writing intervention, I thought it was time to reflect on what is working well, what's not going so well, and what changes I am going to make to help improve the writing of my struggling students.

What is working well?

• Writing with the students every day for a minimum of 30 minutes.
• 45 minutes a week release with the writing group to do rich experiences that we can use for writing.
• Writing for a purpose.  Currently we are finishing off our picture books and are putting these together.  Students are having fun creating their texts for a purpose.  They love sharing their ideas and writing with the group.  As a result, there has been a significant improvement in their motivation towards writing as well as their confidence.
• Writing for an audience.  Writing emails to parents sharing a 'snapshot' of their writing is great for this.  Students get a chance to share their writing with parents during the drafting process.  Students also received feedback about their snapshot of writing from their parents.
• Planning together.  Sharing our ideas orally.  This has helped everyone to expand their ideas because they have heard others.
• Creating descriptive word charts prior to writing.  This is really helpful because students are referring and adding in lots of these words to writing.  They love creating word charts using the online tool 'Wordle'.
• Having writing tool box full of descriptive words charts, punctuation charts, essential word spelling lists.
• Writing solely in pen has improved students confidence.  The writing process is also much clearer because students are making changes which are visible, rather than rubbing work out so their evidence and original work is gone.  They also don't loose track of what they were writing about.
• Students are starting to notice improvements in their writing and are able to verbalise these when asked.  Comments are noted in their books in dated speech bubbles in a different colour pen.
• Children who were once shy or reluctant, are now willing to share their writing with others.
• Children are beginning to give feedback to their peers and say what they liked about their writing.
• After sharing examples of writing, students are beginning to independently make changes and improvements to their own writing.
• Reluctant writers are now coming into class enthusiastic to carry on with their books that they are writing before school and whenever else they can.
• Sticky notes for planning have been fun.  Everyone shares their ideas as they pop into their heads then the sticky notes are placed on a chart.  Double up ideas or unrelated ideas are easily removed.  The sticky notes are easily arranged into sequential order. 
• Using pictures as prompts to give students ideas of what they could write about.  Students refer to the images to check they have described them in their writing; ensuring the picture and text match.  A great way to expand the detail and descriptive language used.

What's not working well?

• I am struggling to get enough writing mileage while students are working with me in a guided teaching session.  Too much time is spent on oral discussions, and not enough on writing.  While the oral discussion is really good and important, I need to reduce the amount of time spent on it to ensure as much writing as possible occurs. 
• Students rely heavily on me during planning to help to pull their ideas out.  As they plan and write more pieces, hopefully they will become more independent with their planning and still produce detailed plans.
• The first piece of writing has been extremely detailed which is great, but it has taken a lot longer to finish then expected.
• Many students are not referring to their learning focus sheets.  While some of them can verbalise what they need to work on during their writing, they aren't tracking their progress and getting their learning focus signed off so a new one can be identified and worked on.

What changes will I make to help my struggling writers?

• I will have students write shorter pieces so they have a range of work in their publishing folder.  It will also allow me to expose them to a greater range of genres or topics.  I still want to ensure students are producing quality pieces rather than quantity.  This will hopefully enable students to see their improvements by making them more obvious from piece to piece.
• When planning, I will still help students get started with their ideas through the use of visual aides, discussions, or experiences we share.  I will then let them continue planning for a bit independently, (most likely still on sticky notes) then have them share their ideas with a buddy; or feedback to the group, so students can still help each other.  This will allow students to become more independent during the planning stage.
• At the start of each session, I am going to try having students tell a buddy what they are going to be working on.  The students will then write key words under the date and highlight it.  This will hopefully prompt them of what they need to focus on during that writing session.  IE: Capital letters, or Spelling etc.  Because the group also love incentives, each time a student achieves their learning focus, they will get a token for our class prize box raffle. 

How will I know if I am successful?

• My ALL students will have a range of quality pieces of writing to share with their whanau.
• The students will be able to independently create detailed plans before writing.
• The students learning focus sheets will be full and signed off.  The students will also be able to self-monitor their progress and identify their next steps.