Lesson 8

LEARNING & TEACHING SEQUENCE

WALT (We are learning to): Edit our work so our writing makes sense, including having correct punctuation and tenses.

Teacher Notes/Planning

This lesson consisted of a whole class writing brainstorm, independent first draft and then 1:1 conferencing with individual learners about their specific piece of writing. The videos show two of the learners during their 1:1 conference.

Prior to the whole class brainstorm we watched this video, explored the Opera House using Google Maps and I shared some facts using this website.

Small group conferencing after first draft of writing. Focus on:

Reading our work to ourselves so we can check it makes sense

Are our full stops and capital letters in the correct place?

Are our tenses correct?

Are any words missing?

What detail could we add to make our writing more interesting for the reader?

Full expanded plan available here

Other learners in the class were completing a piece of writing on the same topic. They were required to locate the necessary words themselves in the classroom and from our whole class brainstorm of ideas. Once their writing was completed, they were to use Paperless to create a picture that matched their story and then post their writing and picture to their blog.

Their completed blog posts are

available here.

Reflection

Some great pieces of writing produced and saw half the class in 1:1 conferencing (only those with film consents were included in the video). Discussing the individuals work in this way gives me an opportunity to hear their ideas and help them to adapt their writing and work on their individual needs (eg tenses, punctuation, adding more detail). It was noticeable that the next lesson (where I saw the second half of the class) I was able to have many of the learners I saw today go back and edit their work (either individually or in pairs) and add punctuation (full stops, capital letters, commas) to their next unscaffolded writing piece because they knew what they were looking for. While I'd originally planned to do this in very small groups, learners took more notice when their piece of writing was being worked on, rather than just listening as we looked a peers writing - this is consistent with them having ownership of their own writing.

LEARNING ON THE CLASS SITE