Progress and Writing Challenge Number Three!

 

 

As we had been sending regular 'Writing Challenges' to the class during placement we took the opportunity to visit the school during a spare day away from Year 3 placement. 

This gave us a good opportunity to discuss how successful the Writing Challenges had been up until now. 

The teacher was very pleased with the Writing Challenges we'd produced and was making time in the busy curriculum to include them. 

As we had not been able to loan the class a set of books from the University's library we purchased a selection of books that we knew the class would enjoy. 

The titles included:

The texts were representative of a wide range of genres and reflected the texts they had most enjoyed earlier on in the project.

Further arrangements were made about the upcoming Writing Challenge and dates to discuss the completion of the project. It was very exciting to be able to share the news that we had also been able to organise for a visitor, author Jamie Thompson to present his new book 'The Teenage Years (Dark Lord)' to the class and discuss the merits of being an author. Luckily for our class of reluctant writers, he too didn't enjoy writing much at school either - so there will be plenty to discuss when he visits. 

Lastly, we set-up the next Writing Challenge display using the stimulus of a Dragon's egg. 

The idea was inspired by Emi's placement where the English Coordinator was trialling a process called 'Exciting Writing'. As often as possible the class were allowed to write freely (in any text-type) about a certain stimulus. The stimuli varied from a piece of music, a noise, an object, image or media clip. The writing was completed with either music or in silence. Usually the children would write for 30-35 minutes before sharing their work with their peers. The focus for exciting writing was to inspire children to write with the freedom of choosing their own genre/purpose/context. The children's work was not formally marked, although self-assessment was encouraged. By doing so, barrier such as spelling and length were removed. The pieces of work also helped to generate a 'Star Writer' for the week. This was based upon creativity, effort or technical ability. The 'Star Writer' was able to write using a special coloured pen in their class work which helped to raise the profile of writing and boosted the children's self-esteem. So the class were left with some new coloured pens and a display that was set-up to celebrate their efforts for this fortnight's Writing Challenge.

The Dinosaur Egg