Playing to Learn

My teacher inquiry this year has delved into Play based learning. I was lucky enough to get to observe Carolyn from Russell Street and her NE roll growth class last week. She has also been focusing on play based learning. 

Carolyn made fantastic use of the outdoor space by utilising the deck and courtyard. A small group were talking about and drawing their mums.

Carolyn was asking lots of questions about what mum looks like, what she was wearing and where she was. All the discussion brought a lot of depth to the pictures and students could describe their Mums confidentially and in detail.  

Another group was using Duplo to build and create a variety of things either independently or with a partner. They chatted away together describing what they were making in a role play type situation.

The last group were enjoying zooming around on the courts on their scooters. It was awesome to see them having so much fun engaging with each other and being active. 

Afterwards everyone headed inside for a shared story 'My Mum' and wrote about the pictures that they have drawn. 

Carolyn gave them support to hear the sounds and had a system of marking using visual images. 

She drew the picture from the sound card

Ticked the sounds they knew, circled the fast words, had a pair of eyes for the focus word and an ear for hearing the sounds in a word. 

As students heard the sounds, Carolyn scribed to support them. Those who could only make lines and squiggles instead of forming letters she called 'Magic Writing.' Saying they needed to explain what they had written as it was magic. This took a lot of stigma away from students not being able to form letters correctly. They felt they could just try and it didn't matter if it wasn't 'right.' She had done a big focus on mindset and the learning pit with them as well to support their thinking in this area. 

She had set up the writing to have particular words and simple sentence starters eg Mr 'ing' to focus on weekly. She incorporated this with her Little Einstein's song on the class blog to practices sounds. 

Having these displayed were a visual reminded of how students could start their sentences.

I loved how Carolyn had set up a learning space with so many visual reminders and play based learning activities to let students express themselves in a variety of mediums. Being active was encouraged as was being a risk taker with your learning. I will definitely adapt some of her ideas to support my writing and ESOL programs next year. 

Engaging Young Writers

This week I was lucky enough to visit Robyn at Russell Street to observe and discuss her writing program. There was some fantastic learning taking place! 

Rob had her students focus on two independent tasks: Lucky dip story and word power. 

The Lucky dip activity involved students picking a laminated picture of their choice, drawing a picture and writing about it. This gave them freedom of expression, encouraged creativity and a lot of autonomy over what they could write about. 

Word power used different sight words around the classroom. Both of these activities would be particularly useful for ESOL and my small writing groups. 

Usually at the beginning of a literacy lesson Rob has students use a whiteboard to write their name and other ideas so they are actively involved in the writing process. They then work on a shared piece of writing in a big modelling book. 

Before starting she likes to warm up with Eric Carle alphabet cards and ask the students 'what letter?' Or 'what sound?' 

She felt that many students lacked knowledge of rhymes and had little experience with nursery rhymes so she incorporates this in her program where ever possible. She also uses songs effectively to engage students and get them to hear different sounds and rhyme e.g. I am Robin, I am Jamie..

After doing the date together she starts to draw a picture and the students discuss it and ask questions, perhaps asking what it could be. These are then expanded on as students write their ideas as well. 

Having a picture on the board to discuss was a successful way to write together. Rob felt a great way to promote positive writing and sharing of ideas was to enlarge the students own writing and then have their peers reflect on it in a small group. 

Their work was then displayed together on the wall. Students felt really proud of their work and the prestige of having work on the wall really helped students to value writing. It had the added bonus of being easily shared with parents. Putting this on Seesaw is also another awesome way to share learning with a wider audience. At the end of the shared writing they have a quick fire writing session using the white boards with a time limit of 2 to 3 minutes. Students were then encouraged to write what they could manage in that time frame. 

Rob puts a focus on recounts and looks at draft writing and reworking to focus on aspects such as word families, chunks, blends, full stops and capital letters. Publishing work is something she felt really was a waste of learning time compared to the learning involved in draft editing. 

The 'perfect person' of the day then wrote some of the ideas alongside Rob. 

I loved how Robin had identified her students reluctance to share their own work but that they were happy to work on their peer's work together. She had also effectively used Seesaw to share her students work with their whanau. I'm looking forward to adapting some of Rob's ideas for my students next year!