Teacher Notes
-Writing-
Term 1
Room 10, H West
Week 1
Lesson Layout/ Instruction
Writing�The expectation for writing is that they sit somewhere without their back against a wall - screens should be visible to me at all times. To begin with, choice will be to sit somewhere in room 10 or on the table in the blue screen. Think carefully about who you sit with. While the children are writing, I will roam, observing those learners who are able to work on the task independently, and supporting those who need more support. I’ll make not of this for future writing lessons.
Students to peer edit (get a friend to read their writing and make changes if necessary). �Students to show the teacher their blurb when ready.�Give students feedback as comments - post on blog once approved.�Take photos of students for blog.
WALT: write about ourselves on the internet in a cybersmart way.�Lesson Purpose: See how students manage themselves in completing a task. Setting up routines - using google drive folders/ blog log. To create an up-to-date ‘about me’ for blogs, considering what is important in being cybersmart (what is ok/not ok to put online?)
Lesson Name: Narrative writing / Punctuation | Date: Week 2 | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Purpose: This is an earlier level requirement, however something that often slides when the children are engaged in their writing, and don’t remember to proofread. Children to begin using the peer-editing rubric to support them in writing (just focus on the full stops/capital letters part of the rubric). WALT: use full stops and capital letters accurately/ correctly in our writing. | Achievement Objective: L3 Processes & Strategies: is reflective about the production of own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating learning with growing confidence. L3 Language Features: uses oral, written, and visual language features to create meaning and effect and engage interest. Literacy Learning Progressions - End of Year 4 - using capital letters, full stops, question marks, and exclamation marks correctly and using speech marks, commas for lists, and apostrophes for contractions correctly most of the time. | ||
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction of Lesson: | This term’s inquiry is all about team work - being better together. Create a narrative where a group of children get stranded on an island with nothing but a rope, a chilly bin and two cans of spaghetti. Tell the story of how the group got there, and how they get off the island. | Talk about the school inquiry: Kia pai te kotahi - better together. What does it mean? Introduce the situation - what would you do if you were stranded on an island with your friends? How would you survive? What would you need? | |
Writing time and prompts |
| 6. Remind students about the need for full stops and capital letters. 7. Send children off to write. 8. Peer editing rubric: Introduce the ‘punctuation’ part of this document. | |
Lesson Name: Narrative writing / Punctuation | Date: Week 3 | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Purpose: This is an earlier level requirement, however something that often slides when the children are engaged in their writing, and don’t remember to proofread. Children to continue learning how to use the peer-editing rubric to support them in writing (just focus on the full stops/capital letters part of the rubric). WALT: use full stops and capital letters accurately/ correctly in our writing. | Achievement Objective: L3 Processes & Strategies: is reflective about the production of own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating learning with growing confidence. L3 Language Features: uses oral, written, and visual language features to create meaning and effect and engage interest. Literacy Learning Progressions - End of Year 4 - using capital letters, full stops, question marks, and exclamation marks correctly and using speech marks, commas for lists, and apostrophes for contractions correctly most of the time. | ||
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction of Lesson: | Write a narrative about a group of children who receive a letter in the mail: “You have been tasked with organising a party and cooking a fabulous feast for the Prime Minister and her family. You are required to arrive for preparations early tomorrow morning. Dinner should be served by 6pm.” What happens? | Talk about the school inquiry: Kia pai te kotahi - better together. What does it mean? Introduce the situation - If you were tasked with organising a party and cooking a feast for someone important, what would you do? What problem might arise? How will you overcome this problem? | |
Writing time and prompts |
| 6. Remind students about the need for full stops and capital letters. 7. Send children off to write. 8. Peer editing rubric: Introduce the ‘punctuation’ part of this document. | |
Lesson Name: Recount writing | Date: Week 3 | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Purpose: This is an earlier level requirement, however something that often slides when the children are engaged in their writing, and don’t remember to proofread. Children to continue learning how to use the peer-editing rubric to support them in writing (just focus on the full stops/capital letters part of the rubric). WALT: use full stops and capital letters accurately/ correctly in our writing. WALT: write a recount | Achievement Objective: L3 Processes & Strategies: is reflective about the production of own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating learning with growing confidence. L3 Language Features: uses oral, written, and visual language features to create meaning and effect and engage interest. Literacy Learning Progressions - End of Year 4 - using capital letters, full stops, question marks, and exclamation marks correctly and using speech marks, commas for lists, and apostrophes for contractions correctly most of the time. | ||
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction of Lesson: | Recount a time when you have felt scared or surprised. When have you felt scared or surprised? What did it feel like? What did you do? | Recount format: Show the ‘recount’ poster and talk through the different aspects of a recount. This is going to be an unsupported writing task (1 day to write). | |
Writing time and prompts |
| | |
Lesson Name: Recount writing - Human Knot | Date: Week 4 | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Purpose: This is an earlier level requirement, however something that often slides when the children are engaged in their writing, and don’t remember to proofread. Children to continue learning how to use the peer-editing rubric to support them in writing (just focus on the full stops/capital letters part of the rubric). WALT: use full stops and capital letters accurately/ correctly in our writing. WALT: write a recount | Achievement Objective: L3 Processes & Strategies: is reflective about the production of own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating learning with growing confidence. L3 Language Features: uses oral, written, and visual language features to create meaning and effect and engage interest. Literacy Learning Progressions - End of Year 4 - using capital letters, full stops, question marks, and exclamation marks correctly and using speech marks, commas for lists, and apostrophes for contractions correctly most of the time. | ||
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction of Lesson: | Inside, get a group of 5 children to model the experience.Demonstrate a couple of times. Pay attention to the fact that they never let go of the other people’s hands. Take the children out to the field to participate in the human knot. Introduce the experience. While they are doing this use the following language: | Kia pai te kotahi - better together Collaboration Team work Problem solve Note, to manage the formation of groups: Join up with 2 friends. Now create a group of 6 (join up with another group). Now create a group of 12. Go outside - in groups of 12, join hands in a random way, ensuring you grab the hand of someone who is NOT next to you. Challenge is to untangle without letting go of anyone’s hand. If a group does it, talk about whether they were being honest or whether someone let go. Did they work well as a team? | |
Writing time and prompts |
| 6. Send children off to write. 7. Peer editing rubric: Introduce the ‘punctuation’ part of this document. | |
Text: Camp according to the kids | Date: Week 6, Term 1 | 6-11yrs | |
Purpose: | Make comparisons and connections to their own camp experience. “Make connections to our own experience” Write in paragraphs | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Resources needed: | | ||
Introduction: | Discuss camp: Highlights, memories, fun. What group were you in, who was your teacher/ leader | Introduce text. Highlights and experiences written by Pt Englanders over the last few years. Introduce WALT. Explain why making connections can help you understand a text. Why these texts would be harder for non Pt Englanders to understand. | |
Discussion - prompts and questions: | Introduce years of texts - Do we have any older siblings that were in these camps (might need some discussion around ages/ years/ teachers) Choose text relative to groups ability. Read a small section of text each time then discuss. Aim to make connections with our camp we have just completed. You might need to model this first with some obvious ones (i.e. if its the 27th annual camp compare to our 29th annual camp). Look at differences; group names etc What do the group names have in common do you think? | Introduce connections activity Try encourage to make as many comparisons as possible, then add as many differences as possible as well. Discuss Advice blog Complete the front slide as you desire. Can either run a cybersmart lesson with it about self-advertising or just complete it as fun. The letter should be encouraged to be completed as proper and encouraging as possible. Real promotion of the camp. Explore Reading Encourage them to read the rest of the stories. Or look on blog for more. | |
Lesson Name: Animation voice over | Date: Week 7 - 8 | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Purpose: To write a voice over which summarises the ideas shared through animations. To be able to write ideas succinctly in a way which matches with the animation. To think about the audience which this voice over is for - children at PES yrs 0-8. | Achievement Objective: L3 Processes & Strategies: uses a developing understanding of the connections between oral, written, and visual language when creating texts L3 Purposes and audiences: Construct texts that show a growing awareness of purpose and audience through careful choice of content, language, and text form WALT Connect oral (spoken) language, written language, and visual language through an animation. WALT write a text which can be turned into a voice over - think about what information we include, and the language we use. | ||
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction of Lesson: | This term we have been creating animations to show how we use teamwork in the classroom. You have been creating three short animations to show these things. When we write a voice over, what do we need to be thinking about? | Kia pai te kotahi - better together Length of the voice over - needs to fit with the animation. Audience - how do we engage the audience? Who is our audience? Language - what language can we use to make our voice over interesting? | |
Writing time and prompts |
| 3. Introduction - Write an introduction together as a class. Who can think of what we could write in the first sentence? How can we hook our audience in? How can we describe the term inquiry? What does ‘Kia pa te kotahi’ mean? 4. Send children off to write the first paragraph - animation 1. 5. Bring back to share some of these. 6. Go off to write paragraph 2 and 3. 7. Peer edit (with editing rubric) 8. Conclusion - write this together | |
Text: Team Work - explanation writing | Date: Week 9, Term 1 | 6-11yrs | |
Purpose: | Processes and Strategies: “Creates a range of texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies with developing confidence” (NZ Curriculum) Ideas: “Adds or changes details and comments to support ideas, showing some selectivity in the process” Structure: “Organises written ideas into paragraphs with increasing confidence” “Organises and sequences ideas and information with increasing confidence” | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Resources needed: | The Writing book, Sheena Cameron: Pages 168-173 | ||
Introduction: | Link back to inquiry experiences over the past weeks: human knot, camp, spaghetti/marshmallow towers, human table & linking challenges. | Introduce Ideas: collaborative brainstorm around what was important in the tasks we have done to be able to work well as a team - what supported the team work/ what hindered it? Introduce WALT. paragraphs (look at previous work of a student which can easily be split up into paragraphs). | |
Discussion - prompts and questions: | See introduction for information about setting up the lesson/ getting children sharing and coming up with ideas to write about. Show children the format of writing to explain. Discuss the different elements of it. Discuss how this is different to a recount or narrative. Introduce the WALT using a previously written piece of work by a student that clearly shows grouping of ideas. Show how these ideas can be divided up into paragraphs. Discuss how the children need to choose three of the brain stormed ideas. Children to spend 5 minutes making a copy of the doc and highlighting the three chosen ideas they will write about. | Back on the mat, discuss how the introduction will look. Write the first sentence as a class. Children to spend 10 minutes writing the rest of the introduction:
Back on the mat, get children to compose a topic sentence for each of the body paragraphs. All should be a similar format. Send children off to add ideas to each of these paragraphs around each of the ideas. Compose the conclusion as a class - should reflect the introduction. | |
Text: Reflection | Date: Week 10, Term 1 | 6-11yrs | |
Purpose: | Processes and Strategies: “Creates a range of texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies with developing confidence” (NZ Curriculum) Ideas: “Adds or changes details and comments to support ideas, showing some selectivity in the process” Structure: “Organises written ideas into paragraphs with increasing confidence” “Organises and sequences ideas and information with increasing confidence” | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Resources needed: | The Writing book, Sheena Cameron: Pages 168-173 | ||
Introduction: | Brainstorm ideas - what we have achieved as a class this term/ what we may have achieved individually this term. | | |
Discussion - prompts and questions: | After brainstorm, get the children to write their own introduction - link back to the introduction from last week. Discuss how this is about them so they will be writing “I” and “We” in their writing. Discuss how there will be a mix of past tense and future tense in this writing. Discuss what detail might look like for their ideas. Model: If our idea is that we have done well at writing, what detail could we add to this? | | |
Text: Dictation Race | Date: Week 10, Term 1 | 6-11yrs | |
Purpose: | Processes & Strategies: seeks feedback and makes changes to texts to improve clarity, meaning, and effect Language Features: uses an increasing range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling and grammar Collaborative writing - kia pai te kotahi - better together | Curriculum Level: 1-3 | |
Resources needed: | |||
Introduction: | Explain the rules of the game - Dictation race | | |
Discussion - prompts and questions: | Instructions:
| | |