The bit after the beginning....
Dawn Finlayson
Tuesday 31 January 2006
Computer crashed on Sunday, had to re-install windows last night :( as the PC recovery man said everything was gone, so no chance of adding previous paper entries to here so far.
Had a great writing lesson today using the success criteria the kids had come up with themselves. Started off three weeks ago modeling an 'imaginative story' (fairies and magic, the whole shebang) and then had the kids discuss in their talking partners (first outing for the talking partners!) what had made it a good story. They came up with a list as long as your arm, which we wrote up on the board, and said that when they wrote their own stories they needed to try and include at least 2 or 3 of the same features in their own stories. Most manage, a couple completely forgot! The following week, we looked at the list again - trying to be a bit too clever I didn't give them a model this time to work from, and tried to get them to discuss what made a good imaginative story. BAD mistake. It was the lesson from hell really, no one seemed to have a clue what I was talking about (apart from the CA bless her!) and when it came to the talking partners (we'd used them a few times that week and they were getting used to it by then!) they all sat there looking confused and didn't come up with anything. So from that we learned that modeling truly is important. (ok, Shirley told us that already - but sometimes you have to find these things out for yourself! I won't forget again, that's for sure!) Week 3 - wanted to make sure that they knew that imaginative stories didn't have to be fantasy or nonsense (we are fans of Dr Seuss in my class!) stories. Read Fran's Flower as an example of an imaginative story. It caused a lot of interesting discussion, as I had thought that, although it is 'made up', it could actually happen, as all it is is a story about a girl whose seed doesn't grow when she feeds it strawberry jam and ice cream, and when she throws it out the window in the rain it does. But the kids pointed out that because in the pictures there is a snail on every page, and in one it has on sunglasses, another an umbrella etc, then it couldn't possibly happen because snails just don't do those things. The things you miss when you read books from a degree angle....
Anyway, we refined our list of 'things that make a good imaginative story' - which is of course the success criteria, to remove the statement that 'they should have magic and fairies in' and other such details. Put up the new list on the shiny new flip-chart with the shiny new markers (the kids were very impressed, but not as impressed as me, I already know it's the best buy we ever made!) and used to help us write our stories about 'a flower'. Stories came out well, and almost all of P2 and 3 were able to say which success criteria they had met. Interestingly, P1, who work in a group with the CA, had so much inspiration from all the discussion that one boy who normally doesn't give much input at all was very upset that from his picture, no one would be able to tell that his flower was speaking, which was the important part of the story, and so this led to a discussion about speech bubbles - and the same child was able to tell the HT all about speech bubbles 4 hours later in the afternoon! We were all very impressed, and I'm convinced that the new confidence they seem to have with their story making had led to all these sorts of discussions taking place.
Anyway. Today, we just quickly ran over our list of success criteria. All the children remembered it well from previous weeks. Todays there was 'a dragon' (we are doing a Chinese new year assembly on Friday and are currently obsessed with dragons!) first we had a little chat about what sort of dragon you might have in your story, and what sort of things he might do. Lot's of children had ideas straight away, which makes a change! I told a story about a dragon (I seem to be getting better at making these things up as I go along!) and pretty much all the children were immediately able to tell me which of the success criteria I had met (all of them, apparently, which I'm sure was a fluke :) ).
So, to the writing books. The Classroom assistant and I watched in amazement as almost all of primary 2 and 3 wrote.... and wrote.... and wrote....
Even the kids who last term were struggling to write one line that made sense and tied in with the theme are writing several sentences now, they know what they want to say, they have their ideas in their head before they start and check it off against the list then, and at the end (if there is time - we need to allow more time really), and are meeting most of the criteria almost all of the time. I must say I keep being amazed at the positive effect it has had on them, but having ownership of the success criteria that they (ALL of them!) decided for themselves has really worked.
The next thing I need to think about is how to make them write in sentences, as that's not one of the success criteria, and, while I try not to mention it, with P3 I really feel that they need to do that! So I will need to manufacture a way of getting them to include it in their success criteria, at least for P3!