Relfections on the Project with the Class Teacher

The Class Teacher Reflects...

On Wednesday 17th April we met with the class teacher to discuss and evaluate the project. 

We looked back at our original objectives:

·         To broaden children’s reading habits

·         To improve their attitudes towards writing

·         To implement strategies and resources to support areas of writing children find challenging

·         To inspire children to become effective, creative and confident writers

We also wanted to assess the following:

·         Have the literacy warm-up games been used and were they effective?

·         How much did the children use the spelling mats?

·         How many of the spelling strategies were used?

·         Have the children been using their magpie books?

·         Receive feedback about the writing challenges.

·         Ask about the children reading a wider range of texts.

·         Ask about the impact of the visitors and the impact of the up-coming author visit.

Teacher comments:

The writing tasks have been wonderful and the children have without doubt benefitted from the writing tasks and also seeing writing from another angle. Also, the tasks were very good starters for the day and I am very grateful for them. 

Bringing in all the different texts in the Autumn term created a buzz with the children and certainly broadened children’s awareness of different texts. 

The visitors to the class were superb and related real-life experiences of writers. The visits gave the children a flavour of writing in the ‘real world’ which showed them the importance of writing. It would have been good to sustain the engagement to have more visits over a longer period of time or on a more regular basis. 

The teacher commented on how we inspired the children and engaged them when we were at school. However, it was not easy to sustain this engagement when we were not there and the children would go back to producing 'average' writing. 

The literacy warm-up games that worked well were: magic box, one word story and excuses. The teacher found these games useful and will try more out in the future.

 

The spelling mats/strategies were useful but due to time restraints on the timetable they were not used very much. However, the teacher will use and develop them more in the coming term. 

The Magpie Books have been good and the children have been using them. However, sustaining their use and getting the children to remember to bring them in was a challenge! They have been using the Magpie Books to collect new vocabulary and the teacher said where else can you collect and write down new ideas. The teacher will definitely use the idea of the Magpie Books in the future and beyond.