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!

Hands on learning

Thermometers…who would have thought that such a simple piece of equipment could show change in action in a way that children can see. Watching the little red line drop as we moved from inside to outside, and then from in the sun to in the shade. Very hard to actually read the numbers – a bigger 5 year old specific version of the thermometer would have been clearer to read, but the children all did well and could see and feel the change that occurred, and could talk about why. This was a deliberate act as I believe that hands on experiences aid the development and retention of understanding and repeating the exercise for a couple of day lead to the children predicting what the thermometers might say.

Another visible change was that of drawing around shadows. First drawing completed at 11:00am and measured and then another done at 12:15pm. Not only had the shadows change size but also changed position “they are diagonal” from Bella M. “Why?”, an explanation from Calder about the Sun moving and so the shadow will move too. Great observing and seeing change. Also great inspiration for writing.

Hoping for a day of cloudy or rainy weather so we can use more measures on our weather stations!