'Taking a Leap of Faith'
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Week 1 (Imitation Stage): I warned my class that we were about to walk into a black hole together. I had no idea where this week was about to take us and I blindly jumped in with both feet on the say-so of a colleague of mine! I have always been incredibly keen when it comes to anything even remotely Literacy based, hence why I have a website all about it. But I have also been teaching in the Middle East for many years and Pie Corbett's 'Talk For Writing' program has sadly passed me by. So it came as quite a shock when a teacher who joined our school in September said that I was going to stand in front of a Year 6 class and start telling them a text in actions, and that I had to draw out the whole thing in little squiggly pictures first.
Yet I embraced the opportunity with both hands and got scribbling. I didn't have a clue how I was going to bring this to life and how I was going to be able to encourage 10 and 11 year-olds to stand up and create actions for the words 'mythology' 'conduit' and 'magma flow,' but they were unbelievably open to trying everything and wow- was I impressed! On day one, the children are supposed to complete a 'cold piece' -a piece entirely written independently with literally no help whatsoever. So on that day, I said to the children that they must produce an Information Text about a natural disaster (our topic) of their choice but it can't be about volcanoes. They were given 45 minutes. The outcomes were varied. My colleague had insisted that the difference between the cold piece at the beginning of week 1 and the hot piece at the end of week 3, would be remarkable. |
Here is the original text. I was advised not to share this until week 2.
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Please note that the marking on these pieces is brief. On the next page of each book is a checklist that the children had to self-assess against once they had finished the Cold Piece. Then I used the check list as a way of identifying gaps across the class that needed to be plugged. It was surprising that even with very little intervention, the children had a good idea of the layout and were capable of putting their ideas into paragraphs with sub-headings. Some of the pieces I received had a peculiar informality to them, which detracted from the formality you'd normally get in information texts. However, there was generally a very good level of understanding, so my trepidation for doing the Talk 4 Writing programme mounted- realistically, how much better could these pieces get?
Three 'Paragraphs' of Squiggles! (The Model)
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So here I am, with my class, on day two of the imitation stage. The children had written for me the day before without any help, and now they were standing with me on the carpet acting out a text that they had never seen, using squiggly pictures that Mr Birch had hastily drawn the night before. Why oh why would they trust that this could work, and why indeed would I? Below are two videos of my Year Sixes and I (...cringe...) acting out parts of the 'green sheet' AKA paragraph one. My colleague- leading the Talk 4 Writing revolution- came in to capture our progress!
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The kids were actually amazing! We learnt the first part of the green page in the first ten minutes and they were all really excited to have a go!
Every now and again, we stopped and I got the kids to go off and have a go with their friends to see if they could get faster at retelling the piece.
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Once we had practised together and in smaller groups I got the children back to the front and pitted boys against girls to see who remembered the actions.
Throughout this stage, we extracted key vocabulary and wrote these on separate cards: you can just about see these on Yellow cards stuck to the TV screen!
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Week 2 (Innovation Stage): Well week one passed by successfully and the children were still eager and enthusiastic as we undertook the first phase of the Innovation Stage- entitled 'Box It Up.' The idea behind this phase is that the children recognise that each of the pages we looked at last week with all of the squiggles on, represents a paragraph and that within each paragraph are a number of important themes or ideas which they can use themselves in their own writing. I used this opportunity to model a 'boxing up' activity with the children using the Volcanoes topic, knowing that the children could use this model very quickly to adapt to their own chosen natural disaster. Below is a copy of my modelled 'boxing up' and some of the children's great ideas! During this stage, the children worked in groups of 3 or 4 as this task required a lot of researching using the internet/iPads.
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Here is the Innovation Stage in action. The children were excited to record their video of the first paragraph of their piece. Follow along with their 'squiggles' using the image on the right-hand side.
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So I've reached the end of Week 2 and I am still wildly intrigued by what results may lay hidden in next week's Hot Piece of writing. I can't wait to see the outcome of these last few weeks. This week has been entertaining to say the least- if I thought that standing in front of my class acting out 'squiggles' would be peculiar, stepping back and watching my class replicate the same activity has been even more interesting... but in the best way possible!
What I have seen, other than incredible team work (working in pairs), is how the children have actually connected with the words and the punctuation choices they are making. Those elements of the text are no longer just throw-away marks on the page- they are actual forces to be reckoned with. Time has been taken to select appropriate vocabulary and terminology whilst energy has been expended to connect with the word enough that it has a familiar 'squiggle' and action to go with it. By going back to basics with sentence construction, the children have managed to connect with each word and have found new ways to rearrange the building blocks, as well as carefully consider the punctuation they might want to use. The writing experience has gone from, 'I am writing because I have to write,' to 'I want to spend some time making informed decisions.'
I really hope this all transpires into thoughtful pieces next week, with accurately used features of an information text, such as sub headings and images.
What I have seen, other than incredible team work (working in pairs), is how the children have actually connected with the words and the punctuation choices they are making. Those elements of the text are no longer just throw-away marks on the page- they are actual forces to be reckoned with. Time has been taken to select appropriate vocabulary and terminology whilst energy has been expended to connect with the word enough that it has a familiar 'squiggle' and action to go with it. By going back to basics with sentence construction, the children have managed to connect with each word and have found new ways to rearrange the building blocks, as well as carefully consider the punctuation they might want to use. The writing experience has gone from, 'I am writing because I have to write,' to 'I want to spend some time making informed decisions.'
I really hope this all transpires into thoughtful pieces next week, with accurately used features of an information text, such as sub headings and images.