Andrew Jackson piece
- Use of the 5 senses
- Description - Factual
- No personal response/opinion
Leaf Description
A thick central artery holds the decaying mass together.
Small veins run off in tangents with patchwork remnants clinging on.
Shades of brown in stark contrast with the whiteness of the paper beneath.
A faint smell of rot lingers
Eco-literacy
- Connect with the simple
- What are the possibilities to get children quickly writing?
- Good teaching habit, ask yourself: What can I do with the kids?
- Create a challenge for them e.g. try not to use 'I' or 'my'
Look at a piece of student writing and decide what can be improved/what needs to be worked on and then think about how this can be incorporated into your teaching.
Murray Gadd - Research on writing
What makes teachers effective? - Three main points are Key Factors of Effectiveness.
- Expectations - Vision of achievement - How is this communicated to the learners?
- Learning Goals - What do teachers think about when they create goals for/with learners?
- Learning Tasks - How are they set up? Deliberate and specific tasks for learning.
- Direct instruction - Explicit teaching.
- Responding to learner's work - Feedback/feedforward - Is it clear?
- Motivating and challenging learners (cognitive)
- Organisation and management - Differentiation - If it is a whole-class lesson aim for 100% learner engagement/need.
- Self-regulation - Actions the teachers take to give students a sense of ownership/responsibility, to become strategic learners.
Developing student agency - use of the book 'Choice Words'
- Learning intentions are too broad - stick to using a learning focus for each lesson.
Memoir - Model - Piano Rock by Gavin Bishop
Give background to hook the students in.
- Make them aware that there is a person behind the model.
Read for meaning - picture aids can be used to ensure 100% understanding from all students.
Use of visual contrast - use colouring pencils to colour for each paragraph - look at what colour each paragraph makes you feel.
Make students aware of the deliberate choices that author's make - Allow them to discover this.
Pick one sentence for students to imitate, e.g. The creek, white with ice, had patches of black where someone before me had...
(white with ice = adjectival phrase)
Plan: Students to brainstorm 4 nouns e.g. window, duvet, light, floor.
- Come up with a full sentence before they move away to write independently.
Success Criteria: Include one sentence with a noun and a descriptor after the noun.
Ensure to teach all different types of writing:
- Shared
- Guided
- Independent
- Collaborative
