PD: Writing Program with Anna Smyth

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Sam's writing that we have been working on

What is happening and why?
My students are now producing more quality work. Their planning is improved now that I have worked on what else they need to be including in their writing and looking at it before the lessons in models with them. They are including details that are being selected more carefully and the work is becoming far more relevant.

This is happening because the process of pulling apart models and then using that info to increase our writing is helping.

What is not happening and why?
Some of my students that need extra support are writing their story in a kind of list.  They have gotten the things they need in their intro/ body/conc and have included them but it doesn't really flow and I don't know how to make this better.  They have done what I have asked of them but now I need to know how to make it better.

What am I going to do to change that?
I am going to continue to use models, although more often, to pull out the specific features I need. In this case it is in the narrative planning stage that we identified the missing parts from our plan. It has been semi structured but to make it better we will need to 'build' our problem up until the climax.

The process Anna and I used to do this was to look at another plan that helps identify the parts (which we did not fully understand) and then look at a journal story to compare the two and discover the missing parts.    This process of looking at the plan from 'The Writing Book' and the story to discover what they needed to do was very helpful.   I had not really thought of looking at both simultaneously before, even though I do it for other things.   Getting out of this in Kids speak that the parts of a narrative that we  need to develop the story are:
1:elaborate in the main problem with details in the introduction
2:discuss the problematic details, just concentrate on the annoying parts etc.
3:continue to change the scene/body language/dialogue etc to make the situation worsen
Then introduce the climax, the problem at it's worse.
4: solution.


The new learning that I am taking away from this that will transfer into all writing is:
-Continue to develop the planning process, up it and up it again.
-go through the entire process of writing before the kids do, this will give me more insight into what will improve their writing.
(I just did a small part and so the problems I encountered, I didn't run into when I did it)
-The process of pulling apart any piece of writing with the plan from Sheena will get me to a more specific ideal.
Finished piece with annotation
-I am also going to ask the students what their writing is about before they read it to me, this will help me to establish the main parts that may/may not be obvious from the reading.
Sheena Cameron's Model


















Our Model Story. 


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