My inquiry for 2016 into my own practice is with writing and I have many learners in my classroom that are unable to complete even one sentence without support. Many of my lessons to date have been whole class based, all writing about the same topic. This is because I quickly discovered, in my first weeks this year, that unless I took this approach, my whole writing lesson turned to noisy chaos within five minutes.
When I took the lessons right back to basics of just writing one GREAT sentence, I was able to circulate and provide support to all those that need it, and this enabled all learners in my classroom to experience success and they were keen to share their sentences via their blogs. Initially we are focusing on just a few things - capital letters, full stops and adding "juicy vocabulary" to make the sentence interesting. In order for the learners to have a library of ideas to draw from, we discuss the motivation for writing before we start (usually an image) and brainstorm some vocabulary as a whole class.
While this has worked well for those learners that struggle to write, other learners are of course ready to move onto additional sentences and need an additional challenge. Last week I introduced using Google Docs with these learners (some had been using them last year already), being sure to carefully scaffold how I want them used in my classroom (naming conventions, where to save etc). These learners are willing and able to write more than one sentence, and the use of Google Docs keeps them challenged as well as making it easier for me to provide comments and ongoing support to them. This week that will be particularly important as I plan to build a story over several days in a carefully scaffolded structure - the use of Google Docs will allow me to provide comments to the learners each night that they can review before moving onto the next step of their writing.
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