Plan / Try / Innovate / Implement

After having chosen students to be in my Teaching as Inquiry target group for accelerating their progress, I gathered evidence, identified trends for students writing well and barriers to their writing achievement from our staff analysis of 2017 end of year writing data. I then read articles around teaching as Inquiry and Teaching Writing in Years 7 and 8: Accelerating Progress.  

Plan / Try / Innovate / Implement

During weeks eight, nine and ten, the students were working on writing narratives in their classroom. This was a good genre to use to start working with my target group. In class the teacher unpacked the structure and language features of writing narratives. I had some input in the lesson. 

The plan was to now to use a resource created by Gemma "Crafting Sentences" I introduced this resource to the students who used the resource to identify noun phrases, zig zag sentences, use of AAAWWUBBIS and complex interrupters in a text. Students quickly learnt how to differentiate between simple, compound and complex sentences using the two resources introduced to them during week 8 of Term 1.  The other resource I used was FANBOYS.

The students also used the resource "Crafting Sentences" to craft their sentences in the narrative they were writing. During discussions the students said that referring to the resource and using it gave them a better idea as to how to write their stories in a better way. They were excited. On checking with the students they did say that they used noun phrases, more adjectives and adverbs in their stories. They also said that they used complex interrupters, AAAWWUBBIS and FANBOYS to write more complex sentences. They also said that being aware of the criteria to write stories (in child speak) helped them be aware of the different criteria in the writing rubrics. This was exciting!!

The awareness that has come upon the students that the stories they write could be taken to a higher level just by crafting their sentences using simple resources is already exciting them as well as exciting me.

Students have written one story, crafted their sentences using the resources provided. They have used the rubrics in child speak to provide peer feedback and feedforward to their peers.