1 November 2010
Today we looked at OTJs. I now know that you use as many sources of evidence at one point in time as possible. OTJs don't show specific progress as a student may always be below the standard no matter what progress they make. The students who will be hard to judge are those who are nearly at, at, or slightly above. The challenge is to understand the actual standards themselves and get your head around all the complex jargon. i.e. register, writing processes
My next step is to have another go at making an OTJ in writing on a student who is close to the standard.

Murray Gadd

What an inspiring day with Murray Gadd. He makes everything sound so simple. I think I would be a great writer if he was my teacher and I think I would like writing. I will endeavour to teach in this way for my students. Some actions from today...
Buy lots more senior picture books as motivation for writing; change the planning format we are using as a team slightly to include whole class task and purpose, then for groups, learning intentions, success criteria and how to organise the lesson.
I really appreciated clarification on the classroom programme, teaching in groups and the task versus the learning goal. A fantastic learning day.

Teacher Inquiry

As part of our Writing PD we have been involved in a teacher inquiry looking at the modelling of writing. My inquiry was to use explicit modelling to enable my students to write compound sentences from shared planning. I have used shared planning in a more focused manner with my lower writers and they are becoming more confident at sharing ideas to add to our shared plan. They have also been referring back to the modelling and using the ideas in their writing. I have found that once a learning intention has been covered it is necessary to keep reminding the students to include this in all their writing and am thinking about a way I can make this more systematic. I am now using a differnt planning sheet where each group is planned for with a learning intention and explicit prompts recorded. I want to trial a new plan where the writing task is spelt out, separately from the actual writng group learning intention.

Literacy Professional Development

Great to look closely at the writing progressions in detail and see how to analyse best fit for a student's piece of writing. Using the National Standards first then fine tuning with the LLPs was very useful. A grid showing the writing progressions will be great for students to assess their progress and to report to parents. Jill led us through the session very clearly.

Bernie shared the framework for up and coming PD which really clarified where we are heading next.Really looking forward to working in teams with Jill to look at data and writing groups. The reading on 'Sharing Learning Intentions' was very clear and raised great discussion about sharing learning intentions with specific groups and how we will know we have achieved. It's all becoming so much clearer.

Improving Writing

The example of modelling, prompting and providing feedback is very powerful in 'Effective Literacy Practice'(pages 56 and 88). Being able to conference students individually in such depth is always the best option but doesn't always work out in a busy classroom. Setting specific criteria for a piece of writing is absolutely necessary and I really like the idea of the students checking through the criteria themselves to see if they have covered each of the criteria in their writing. This is an area I will develop where I will not only model the genre of writing but co-construct criteria with the students. I am also going to try student peer and group marking by using a student's piece of current writing and providing feedback in a group situation where the students check through the criteria with me.

PD- Jill Ritchie 8 March

It was a very refreshing session. Great to be able to decide on beliefs about writing. The reading given out was also very worthwhile. Good to try some writing ourselves. It makes you realise how difficult it can be with the tasks we ask students to do. I am thinking alot about what effective writing looks like and want to co-construct some criteria with my class. Really liked the list Jill showed us. Unfortunately didn't have time to copy it down.