Beyond a Blackboard

This year I have been focussing on generating more discussion to support my students in literacy. I have been using reciprocal reading, argumentation boards, text analysis and language experiences to ensure that I am scaffolding my students with talk. My class recently took part in Get New Zealand Writing, where they had to create poems formed out of first 40, then 18 rich words that are related to an item. Because vocabulary is something that they need to work on, this was an incredibly challenging experience for them and I had to scaffold some students far more than the programme suggested. I also just finished marking my students first asTTle writing tests and once again found that they scored relatively low in vocabulary, using most 'everyday' or social vocabulary, despite writing explanations that are more suited to academic vocabulary and tone. In response to this, I have decided to focus on vocabulary for another week in writing and look at short poems suc...

This year I feel I have really improved my ability to complete the Share component of the Learn, Create, Share cycle. This has lead to my class making more connections with other students and classes online. Check out my top tips for sharing below! My top tips for regular blogging: Adding quick opportunities for blogging throughout the week. I include this in my planning (to ensure that it happens). It could be that the students blog their introductions to a piece of writing, their initial response to a text or that you plan for share-worthy activities. For example, when focussing on vocabulary, learners could create a word cloud or word wall of the rich vocabulary they want to use in their writing. Having clear expectations around blogging. My students know that I expect at least three blog posts a week and that they are due by Friday. They also know what tasks I would like them to blog and some tasks have a set deadline. E.g. your vocabulary word cloud should be on yo...

This year I am going to be focussing on generating discussion in my classroom. In my previous inquiry I underestimated the power of discussion. I loved facilitating debate and getting my students to discuss their ideas before writing. This was a huge part of my literacy programme and I believe it really supported my students to achieve in writing. I want to focus more on generating this discussion, with the intent of using more academic vocabulary and the language of learning. I found from my inquiry last year and the Woolf Fisher data that vocabulary and the language of learning are holding my students back in all subjects. Essentially, I am looking at the problem from my past inquiry once again, but altering my approach to see if I can achieve greater results.