Still harping on about writing!

Literacy is still the main focus and the discussions this week centered around writing as it is still an area I feel I need to work on.

We introduced Pebbles to the children and a mistake I think I made was that I focused my attention on writing in 1 or 2 progress pebble goals for each child with them so they had ownership (which I believe was a good thing) but it meant my attention wasn’t on what they were writing so I don’t think the actual writing lesson was a particularly good one.

One point Claire made was that I’m spreading the writing focus across too many genre and that perhaps I should focus. This for me was a bit of a lightbulb moment. Instead of trying to link each concept experience to a writing task I have now planned the next week (and the subsequent 2 weeks with the next concept group) with just one writing focus – that of writing instructions. The goal is that at the end of their time with me, each child should be able to write a set of instructions.

To aid this I created a set of pebbles just based around writing instructions plus a template to support everyone. The set of books “First Steps” was really helpful in identifying the skills that need to be taught and also in managing my expectations!

Fingers crossed that this has the desired effect, and that I feel I am actually teaching them some technical skills.

As an aside, the BINGO sheets are working well and children are really enthusiastic about some of the activities, others I need to promote a wee bit more!