I would like to ask what document you refer to for your Writing learning outcomes?
This is a great question I was asked this week. The word ‘document’ made me head off to my shelf and find my writing folder full of lists of WALTs in kids’ speak ready to hand over. During lockdown I found a great treasure from a previous school of a Jill Eggleton Key Links pack with a great checklist to tick off with each child in an individual writing conference to show if they are writing at a level of 1i, 1ii or further still. I also thought to send the link to a document teaching staff at our school have worked on for students to check goals. I think these documents are easy to use for planning when you first begin teaching. However, they do have some restrictions - time to administer, simplicity, not broad enough in all of the aspects we are wanting students to achieve and most of all they are learning intentions and success criteria, not necessarily learning outcomes.
Now that I think about it I don’t always pick up a document and refer to it to plan writing. Some of my planning is through experience. It is also through assessment of students that I plan writing outcomes. I think about my learners, what their next steps are and what my focus will be. I also consider what is going on in our learning environment.
Here is what I mean. At the time of lockdown the majority of my new entrant learners were at that point where to improve their writing they should be encouraged to make spelling approximations. However, through my experience as a parent trying to get a child to write at home, I knew that this was not the time to be worrying over how children were spelling words. I took it back to basics and used a modelling video of a teacher writing a simple sentence. We kept it simple. Parents were now learning beside their child. My focus at this point was on the part of the writing process to do with goal setting, following a learning intention and self-assessing whether you achieved your success criteria. This is a really important part to the writing process and possibly why so many documents have been written in child speak.
I knew this was quite easy for some of my students and they were doing this bare minimum one sentence yet they were capable of two sentences in a busy classroom. My colleague, Leonie, was getting very excited over her writing by using science pictures to promote exciting word usage. I thought what better opportunity to try this than when they are with their parent who will help give them instant support to think of these words. But I kept it simple and specifically chose 'describing' words and wrote ‘adjectives’ in brackets. This was our writing focus for about three weeks of online learning. Within this I was flexible to change the topic of our writing each day. As students photographed their writing for me I encouraged them to reflect on the success criteria after they read their story to me. It was terrific because the mums were right there as a personal tutor to ensure the reflection happened. This would take a lot more time in a classroom to achieve.
Some students quickly grasped the learning goal and I gave them feedforward in my comments. Something happened that seldom happens for me in a classroom; they started trying their new goals because Mum was reading the feedforward and remembering to do it in the following session. I was able to differentiate learning according to the learner. So one student now writes titles in her writing simply because she was ready for new learning. I extended her learning whilst keeping the main focus simple and the same for the whole class.
After four weeks I changed the writing outcome to be for writing in a sequence. By now some of my struggling writers were not sharing my set work and I had a bunch of children who were ready for a new focus. In a classroom setting this would be where I work with groups. I know one colleague differentiates learning through a system of Must do, could do. So my new learning outcome became writing in a sequence. I modelled this and my expected planning by drawing three pictures. My learning intention/WALT/child speak became 'We are learning to write a sequence'. I called my 3 picture drawing a 'sequence plan' and added the success criteria to match a sentence in their writing with the picture. By making this my focus I knew that I could keep this for a while even when I change topics and text purposes. I knew a lot of children were doing baking and this has a sequence, They were making crafts and that has a sequence. They were going for rides on their bike and that has a sequence. In those three different topics a student could write a recount, recipe and instructions. I have beginning writers, so getting bogged down in genre is pointless for me. What the Literacy Learning progressions say after one year at school is that
They draw on knowledge and skills that include understanding simple text types (e.g., personal recounts and simple
descriptions) and using them to meet their writing purpose;
So this guides me in my teaching to not have a recount as my learning outcome but what the students need in order to write a good recount by the time they have been at school for a year. I keep this at the back of my mind that students will be able to write a simple description, because when I am teaching guided reading I might see a good opportunity to let them describe an animal as a follow up activity. This will help prepare them for the future of descriptive writing. I think that success in writing comes largely by the support we give students before they have to do it. This includes exposure to writing forms in books and plenty of prior modelling.
When our students write they learn more than just the focus (learning intention). However, this is the learning I will provide feedback on. In my post comments I found myself giving feedforward to each child that reflected them as a learner. Interestingly I noticed that one of my students wrote in the present tense when she was writing about a trip she had taken during the weekend. That illustrated to me that I will have to spend time talking about and maybe explicitly teaching her about using past tense in recount writing. At the same time I now know that all of the other students used past tense. That is a learning outcome I have in writing, ‘use the correct tense’. But I will not set it as a class learning outcome unless it becomes necessary. Why teach something they already do?
To sum up I don't just go to one document to plan my writing. I have used multiple sources for a while and now have experience to draw on as well. There is a lot to take into consideration and starting at one document is the first step. Don't throw out the document you have been using. Add to it. Put it in your own words and come up with your own learning outcome. Make sure it fits with the unit of study (At the moment that is space or matariki, so what are the potential writing opportunities to use here?). Look at the last assessment available, formal (e-asttle) and formative (what their writing books or writing posts show), look at where their learning is at (Writing Learning progressions), look to where they should be going or what is our bigger overarching achievement objectives (New Zealand Curriculum)(exemplars), chunk your writing learning outcome into digestible learning intentions (WALTs) with success criteria. (These don't have to come from a document but there have been multiple versions created). I visually like the ones at the bottom of the page on Jessie Pope’s class site.
Oruaiti School I cans for writing
Some of these are still a work in process.
Mangonui School I cans for writing and on my shelf - Green writing folder
I also want to stress that I have many writing learning outcomes that I specifically teach in another part of the day and not during 'writing time'. This includes handwriting and phonics. These are processing skills that are outlined in the NZ curriculum and Literacy Learning Progressions. I think it is a good practice to explicitly teach these skills so when the process of writing occurs students are able to focus on ideas. I also think that good literacy teachers make explicit links between reading and writing. Therefore, I talk about the writing process when I am reading a book aloud or when I am teaching in guided reading sessions. This can be miniscule such as, “What punctuation goes here? A full stop? Yes, because the author wants us to stop talking. This group of words makes sense when we stop here.” There is no way a teacher can plan all of these learning points, so we have to really know our learning outcomes to maximise those teachable moments. We need to constantly refer to multiple documents, formatively assess students and collaborate with our colleagues.
I had two major takeaways from distance learning:
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Keeping a broad writing learning outcome kept writing simple, achievable and flexible for the majority of students.
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Clear, achievable success criteria enabled me to give feedback specifically about their learning goal. I could then make feedforward a next step. Something achieved, something to work on.
It has been hard to keep this up in class this week. I miss my hard working parents!
Keeping a broad writing learning outcome kept writing simple, achievable and flexible for the majority of students.
Clear, achievable success criteria enabled me to give feedback specifically about their learning goal. I could then make feedforward a next step. Something achieved, something to work on.
