Teaching as Inquiry

I have gone back to the beginning of the Inquiry cycle. The oral language activities have been working to help the students to understand the content at a deeper level and contribute to the lessons in a more interactive way.

Now I need to work out what is next. I looked at their work and found my next 'Big Bang'.

Soldier Brooklyn Stephone Maile Wiremu   Bronson

What is happening?

The students are now planning with many details and using those plans to organise sentences into paragraphs most of the time. By using quick writes and simple structured activities, I tested this out. They found the use of structure and vocabulary very easy, as well as articulating their ideas within a group and coming up with ideas.

These students are able to generate ideas and build up a plan that will help them write. They are learning the different structures of things. Something that they all lack to varying degrees is the ability to consistently create sentences that makes sense/ have correct sentence structures.

Why is that happening?

I'v noticed that when reading with these students they are not reading as fluently as the others. Often missing punctuation cues or just reading without expression. After asking the students to record themselves read their work back to a video also, I noticed that they were reading their ow work un-fluently(?).

Not using the punctuation to help change the meaning or intonation. As well just trying to get the words out. Not trying to convey a message of the writing to the reader.

What am I going to do about it?

After talking to Arthur I had a good think about reading fluency and the link between reading and writing. As well as the way these students read. I have a few ideas to think about so far. My hunch is that if I can increase their fluency when they read and help them think about the author and the message of a text, when they transfer that to their own authorship they will begin to see their writing as needing to be fluent. By using punctuation as well to help point out how to author wants up to understand something, as Alida has shown in the ALL strategies, I think I will be able to push up fluency in reading AND writing. Once these students begin crafting sentences that are structured in the same way they talk. I already use: 'Does it make sense when we are reading back our work, but if we wrote it- then yes- it does make sense'. I will start to also think about how I can ask 'Does it sound write' as well. Pulling from MSV in reading. Using that when we read our own work too.

What have I found out so far:

Writing often in quick bangs helps with writing fluency

start at sentence fluency and then move up

Writing about something improves comprehension!