The development of creative writing

Recently there has been a lot of discussion online around the importance of creative writing and giving students the time to just write.  As part of the development of our schools responsive learning group for literacy, and my inquiry around helping struggling writers overcome barriers to writing and adapt my teaching practice, I have decided to trail 10-15 minutes of creative writing each day in my class.  The aim of this is to have students develop a love for writing, to remove the barriers around their work being assessed, and for students to develop their creative thinking and ways of expressing themselves through written communication.

Yesterday was our first go at trialling creative writing.   Students were able to write anything they wanted.  There work is not going to be marked or critiqued.  They are able to share their writing orally with the class or a buddy if they choose.  If they have had a bad day and need to vent, they can staple the page shut if they wish.  My only requirement is that students do what they want to do and hopefully enjoy it.  If they want to write a card for someone - write a card.  If they want to write a list of words that pop into their head - write a vocab list.  Students can use coloured paper, art paper, their books...  They can use any coloured pen, felts, crayons.  The choice is 100% the students.  For those students who struggle to come up with ideas, I can show them a picture as a prompt, share a video clip, give them a word etc.  I just want my students to write and have fun doing it.

Yesterday's first session was an immediate success.  Student's moaned at the end of 15 minutes when they were asked to stop so we could move onto our afternoon program.  To top it off, I had three students (two of them who are well below in writing and are part of my priority group, and one who has dyslexia) all ask if they could take their writing home to carry on with it.  One even wanted to publish and decorate their work up because they enjoyed the task so much.  So initially, the student response to creative writing has been embraced and is motivating, but only time will tell if it is effective.

On recapping the session to get student feedback, several students used their critical thinking to reflect on our current setup of our independent writing books.  At present, the school requirements are that students are to write in blue pen and edit in red.  These students asked "If you want us to be creative in our writing and enjoy it, then why do we all have to write in blue pen in our independent writing books?"
A great question.  I had already been wondering this question myself and was going to trial my ALL writing group with their own choice of pen colour, but why limit it to only this group?  I promptly took this question to our management team and team leader who were all very supportive and were more then happy to trial student choice of pen colour in their books as a way to see if it increases engagement, enjoyment and possibly quality and quantity of work.  So today the new systems will take place.  I have had to remind students that they need to be sensible with their use of coloured pens and remind them that writing is a form of communication.  If the pen colour is hard to read, then it is probably not a good choice.  Also, if pens are very inky and likely to go through pages, again it may not be a sensible choice.

The students and I are now very excited to see how creative writing evolves in our class and to see if their is any advantage/disadvantage to students writing in any colour they choose.

Reading to Learn PD 19-5-16

Yesterday I attended a PD day around Reading to Learn and the PaCT assessment tool for Reading.  PaCT supports teachers to make overall judgements on their students.  The aspects you select for each area is placed on a graded continuum and PaCT requires you to make a best fit judgement.  Once you have completed your judgements the PaCT tool then puts this information onto a graph and aligns the final result with National Standards.  This is a great tool to determine where a student is sitting within National Standards, and is the tool we will be using for reports to parents.Below are the notes I recorded about the PD day.  I then fed back to the Year 5 & 6 team about what I had learnt from the PD.

Reading to Learn PD

19-5-16

“Students need to do more than just read (or write).  They need to use their reading and writing to meet the demands of the NZ curriculum.

Pg 3, Literacy Learning Progressions.

Less of the technical steps to reading and more around the thinking and discussing of text.  Enjoying reading!

By end of year 3:

• Have ‘constrained’ skills pretty much under control (sounds, abc ….)
• Can monitor their reading
• Use some basic comprehension strategies
• Have some knowledge of how basic texts work
• Have built up a sight vocabulary
• Can evaluate straightforward information
• Can identify the writer’s purpose
• Are fluent readers

Start by reading the text with support, discussing etc then pull the learning/strategies DATs from the discussion points, needs that arise from the discussions.  (Work backwards from the discussion of the text).

Prior knowledge connections are so important to connecting and gaining meaning with the text.  You can’t assume kids know basic experiences/prior knowledge.

Dive deeper into texts.  It’s not about having a new text everyday.

Reading to Learn: Do the children have the knowledge and skills they need to engage with the curriculum?

By the end of year 4: locate and evaluate information and ideas.

Within texts.

By the end of years 5 & 6: locate, evaluate and integrate information and ideas.

Within and across a small range of texts.

By the end of years 7 & 8: locate, evaluate, and synthesise information and ideas.   Synthesise: a new idea is developed.  Come up with their own ideas and conclusions.

Within and across a range of texts.

Reading to learn strategies:  Tools that you use to achieve a particular purpose.

Reading and writing are tools to:

• Organise their thinking
• Construct and create meaning
• Communicate information and ideas in print and electronic texts
• Reveal their developing knowledge of content across the curriculum.

(Reading and writing standards Years 4-8 pg 5)

Teacher enthusiasm and passion.  Excitement about the text.  Reveal this to the students.  Teacher shares opinions about a text they have read - maybe positive or negative thoughts about the text.  Shares about emotions around reading.

ENJOY a BOOK!

Hi 5! Strategies: Enhancing comprehension

1. Activating background knowledge
2. Questioning (kids asking questions.  The person who asks the most questions - learns the most!)
3. Analyzing text structure
4. Creating mental images
5. Summarising  

Questioning:

Ask ‘wondering’ questions

Ask questions to ‘clarify confusions’

Ask ‘right there’ questions ‘think and search’ questions.

Make sure the students know what you want and are doing.  Tell them “I am going to ask a question about…. I am modelling to you how to….”

Sentence structures, language…. Change and vary depending on the purpose and audience.  (Science has different structures to maths etc)

Analyzing text structure:

Recognise common text purposes (describe, inform, recount, explain…)

Recognise common text structures in fiction and nonfiction text (sequential, descriptive, persuasive, cause and effect…)

Negotiate continuous and non-continuous text

Recognise different text types within a text

Use signal or cues words

Follow and keep track of pronoun references

Recognise and use specific language and visual features

Teach kids how to read complex sentences

Articulate how using knowledge of text structure, helps them read and understand the text.

Summarising:

Delete irrelevant details

Combine similar ideas

Condense main ideas

Connect major themes into concise statements (that capture the purpose for reading).

By the end of the PD day I had felt very overwhelmed and needed to take time to think about my reading program and how I determine the WALTS and success criteria.  Since reflecting about 'Clarity in the Classroom' and the delivery of my reading program, I decided to flip the order of my teaching sessions around.  I have started be beginning with LOOKING at the text.  Asking students 'What do you see? What do you know from looking at the text?...'  This has helped us to by ensuring we use all the visual cues provided to gain information about the text, and connect with the text.  From here we begin reading and discussing the text.  From the discussions about the text and specific questioning, I am able to gain what the WALT should/needs to be.  Sometimes this aligns with what I had planned the WALT to be, but occasionally a prior step is needed, so I can quickly adapt my teaching to suit.  Once the reading is over, the students know are able to identify what their WALT was and quickly identify the success criteria.  

We have been doing this new way of reading for just over a week now, and already the student feedback and response has been very positive.  They have said they prefer it the new way, because they get more time actually reading, they can quickly identify what they have learnt, and are able to independently state the success criteria because they know what they did to achieve their WALT.

Facilitating staff meeting and new leadership role

This week I have been appointed the leader of our school's literacy group.  In addition to this role, I was also invited to facilitate the staff meeting at a local school all round writing and the PACT tool.

Despite my initial nerves, I managed to run an effective meeting all around how to use the PACT tool in writing, how to make OTJ's, tricks around getting quicker at making judgements, how to use the next steps to guide teaching and planning, and how I use my writing books and writing program to make my judgements.

The feedback from the staff was overwhelming.  Many teachers are now wanting to come and observe my writing program.  They were impressed with the student's writing books and the level and volume of writing my student's are producing.

My next step in my leadership role for literacy, is to present alongside our school principal at the Writing Symposium in Wellington in July.

Feedback emailed out to the staff about my staff meeting presentation:

Congratulations to Tineke who ran an amazing staff meeting for the G teachers after school yesterday. It’s a pretty tough thing to do in front of colleagues from another school and she did a fantastic job.

If you suddenly get an influx of G teachers through your class, blame Tineke….

Many thanks

L.