More on Teaching Writing...

What I think makes a difference

Reflecting on and recording my thoughts about teaching writing has been interesting and worthwhile. 

Also, recently the Tai Tokerau Literacy Association held their annual 'mystery bus tour' which visited my classroom. I was able (with permission from my students)  to share some of their writing and the process involved. (See my previous posts) To chat with other teachers and share this inquiry was a very positive and affirming exercise and I received a lot of positive feedback. Unfortunately I failed to take photos on the night, but this is how my classroom looked, if you can imagine students' writing books and 'published' works out on their desks:

Also on display were a number of previous co-constructed Success Criteria charts. I like to write these on chart paper so that they can be referred to throughout the process. I've been suprised to note that when these are later displayed around the room, students sometimes take the initiative to refer to them for their own free-choice writing or in their conference group discussions about writing. The charts look like this:

Not exactly neat nor even well presented, but it is a co-constructed, student voiced criteria and a working document which is constantly referred to throughout the writing process. 

Incidentally, this one is for a piece of narrative writing about a magic ring. This topic relates to our previous shared book literature study on 'The Hobbit' by JRR Tolkien. I find that narratives work best when students are given a plot framework which stops them from 'getting lost' and writing without the end in mind. The plot outline for this piece looked like this:

I think that you can tell I'm not big on handwriting and making things look pretty. That is not my priority.

Maybe because they know "The Hobbit' really well, the students seemed very motivated to write this narrative. Here is a finished piece, photo taken prior to my marking. I think the child's self assessment demonstrates how he has focussed on the success criteria.

 The students really do seem to enjoy working this way to improve their writing.  The results have been good. (More on this later) These are the points which I think have made a difference:

• Having a co-constructed success criteria which is available and referred to throughout the process.
• Student working in mixed ability conference groups, using the success criteria to assist each other to 'grow' their work.
• Providing individualised written feed forward.
• Asking students to highlight their teacher written feed forward and record it as a future goal.
• Having students self -assess  each published piece according to the success criteria before teacher marking.
• Generally requiring students to be more reflective about their own writing.

The next step? I think as the teaching year draws to a close, before this class moves on to that big world we call High School, I will ask them to complete a short survey. Perhaps just 3 questions to gauge their own thoughts about their writing progress. I'll also take a closer look at their progress over the year and collate some data.

I'll let you know how I get on and I'll share my final thoughts for the year about my inquiry into the teaching of writing sometime soon. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.