UPDATE Blog post structure

Over the past couple of months we have noticed that student's blog structures have improved. More capable students are drafting blog posts that clearly use the correct structure for the text type. Less capable students are drafting blog posts that demonstrate at least a rudimentary understanding that there is a certain order for each kind of text.

The aspect we haven't observed yet is an increase in the use of appropriate language features. That is our next step for teaching blog post writing...or rather writing the text types recount, information report, and explanation.

To aid this process, I have updated the Blog Guide poster to include the language features and examples of those features.

Blog post structure

Recounts, information reports, explanations. How do we write them? In spite of having taught these text types in detail consistently for several years, we are still giving feedback on the same aspects of these text types. To scaffold students into self managing their usage of these text types, I (Greg) have developed a diagram/ flow chart showing the structure, and an example of recounts, information reports, and explanations in one place.

Students will be referred to this diagram for feedback on these text types for their blog posts.

Increasing learning conversation and literacy through blogging and commenting | Teacher Inquiry 2020

Accelerated learning, the holy grail being sought by schools in the Manaiakalani cluster. At Panmure Bridge School, our data has shown acceleration particularly in Writing. This acceleration has been aided in recent years thanks to a flattening of the 'Summer Slide', related to implementation of the Summer Learning Journey (SLJ). Grant Oglivie and Greg Wong's joint teacher inquiry for 2020 is to increase students' other forms of literacy, i.e. reading and oral, by leveraging learning conversations through blogging and commenting as used in the SLJ. The first step in this process is to codify and teach a system for blogging, then do the same for commenting.

The system for blog posting has been decided as using the recount, information report, and explanation text types taught in the Writing curriculum. There are several reasons for using these text types rather than developing another structure. Using these text types will compound on Writing lessons, providing students and teachers with more opportunity to refine students' writing techniques and find areas needing improvement. Working on these text types so frequently frees up Writing lessons to be dedicated to the grammar, style development, and the remaining text types (narrative, persuasion, and procedural). Finally, areas to be commented on are made available when students have written their posts in a well structured and thought out manner.

Evidence from students' drafting process will be used to inform the exact teaching points needed and when to continue to each phase. This process is likely to take a whole school year and possibly reach into 2021 to establish good routines in this year's year 5 students. Small scale improvements are likely to be seen by mid 2020, with long term improvements appearing as students reach Years 7 & 8.

Student Voice

At the conclusion of the plays the students were asked some very basic questions and put their hands up. Eye closed to allow them to be honest and not just copy their mates.

Surprisingly the larger majority of student found the 5 weeks extremely difficult. On the other hand the large majority enjoyed the process and wanted to do more.

After this students were ask several more questions to blog about. Reading the responses it was pleasing to see that overall the students perceived they had improved in their oral language. Was this necessarily true........Short answer is NO! Even though they enjoyed it, were they ready to take on Broadway?? Absolutely not, but there was enough positive energy and excitement that it will be interesting to watch their improvement over the next 5 weeks. Students wanted more so they have been given the remainder of the term to put together one last performance. Surely 4.5 weeks of practice will be better than a 2 week period......... Only time will tell.

Overall however ever student took part and didn't shy away from the challenge.

Oral language through performance

An under utilised and extremely good resource are the plays in the school journals. Why?? You can search reading level, topic and amount of parts in each play. This makes planning easier.

These were used to enable students to develop their oral language skills in a realistic setting, that they had on most cases not been exposed to.

Students started with just understanding the vocabulary in the text and how it was used to tell a story. Something they have always done through guided reading!

The next stage was to learn their part, this proved very quickly to be the challenge. They had never been asked to learn lines before. Why is this important? They quickly realised learning their part in isolation was difficult but learning as a group made the "cues" easier and soon the flow came to their reciting. Listening was a skill they didn't first think they needed, but soon it was as big a part as say their lines. Another part that helped was they also needed to have an under study partner. Once they had their lines, students were tasked with thinking about the character interactions and expression of certain lines.

Once they were learnt we could go on to expression and delivery of lines. This was the fun stuff! Students experimented with anger, sarcasm, excitement etc; Something they found they never did when reading before.

This all tied together over a 2 week period, with a "show" at the end. No lighting, no props, and costumes, just voice and body to tell the story.

Vocabulary and non-fiction texts

Across the board in LS1, but especially among the lower ability readers, there seems to be a big deficit in vocabulary (in all learning areas). To alleviate the deficit this year, Grant and I are explicitly teaching new vocabulary to students and making them use it in context to strengthen the understanding.

I have also made a push in reading to read non-fiction books on a wide range of topics. Many of the topics are ones the children have never come across or talked about in detail. Coupled with explicit vocabulary teaching, I hope this will expand the children's prior knowledge and vocabulary.

To work in conjunction with the reading of non fiction texts, I have a series of tasks for students to complete after reading a text. The tasks range from simple tasks that would be used in the junior school to more complex tasks such as creating a hierarchy graph of ideas in the text.

Boosting literacy through oral language

In an effort to boost not only reading comprehension, but also the confidence to present an answer, we are increasing the amount of oral work students are doing.

We are attempting this in multiple ways including performing plays and regular oral presentations for IRL (in real life), and screen casting and FlipGrids for the online component.

Using FlipGrid and screen casting allows students to actively consolidate their thoughts and understanding through preparation to provide a well scripted exposition.

Off the cuff oral presentations and performing in front of their peers improves the confidence to communicate ideas. At the very least, presenting and performing will help desensitise students to being in front of a crowd, which in itself can be a crushing fear.