Changes made to our writing programme included:
- No follow-up rotation. (This was a rotation that involved the student independently continuing with their piece of writing that they had been co-constructing with the teacher). The reason for removing this rotation, is because I found that what could have been a great, high level example a piece of writing, would often end up off-track or have irrelevant information etc, making it loose the high quality of what was started. In order to develop student's writing, students are now asked to take what they have been working on with the teacher, and transfer this into their independent writing. This means they independently practise and apply the newly taught skill, as well as keeping the co-constructed example piece of writing in tact and at a quality level.
- No pencil. Many students would spend a lot of time rubbing out and correcting mistakes, and as a result it made it difficult to see the changes made and their thought process. Now students only write in pen. This allows me to see how much work has been done - because half of it hasn't been rubbed out, and more importantly, I can see the development in the student's thinking.
- Mixed ability writing groups. My writing groups were always set according to ability, however after trailing mixed ability groups for over a term now, I believe this is a great way of arranging students for writing. I gave my student's a PMI chart too, to gauge their thoughts on mixed ability groups. It was amazing to note that the 23/26 students preferred working in a mixed ability group. The key reasons for this included: *All students have different strengths so they can learn from them; *Love not having a top or bottom group - even more importantly, struggling learners loved not being in a bottom group for everything.
- Publishing rotation: A new rotation is publishing. Giving students an opportunity to present their crafted piece of writing, and see it nicely presented in a range of different ways, has motivated students to create more quality pieces of work because their writing will be shared with an audience. It also gives their writing a purpose.
- Highlighters used for editing and proofreading: Students swap their writing with a buddy. The buddy then uses a highlighter to identify changes needed. The students have really enjoyed using highlighters for this and it has shown some improvement in the corrections made.
- Purpose to writing focus: Planning writing units now focuses on ensuring students have a purpose for writing and an authentic context. Examples of recent units include creating a newspaper, and publishing and illustrating their own narrative picture book.
