Writing

Writing is where our collaborative learning journey started. It has continued to evolve over the last eighteen months. We feel that we have now come to a point where the balance of shared writing, and writing time allows the children to produce their best work.

We have found that by taking turns at planning, we are able to plan more in depth and engaging lessons for the children. Even more so now that we are collaborating in other areas as well. We can put more focus and time in to the areas that we are taking for the week. We have noticed that our kids are more engaged because of this.

A week of writing in Room Twelveen consists of a weekend recount on a Monday, Scaffolding writing topic and Tues - Thurs, and Free Writing on a Friday.

Scaffolding/Shared Writing

When we begin a new writing genre we take the time to expose the children to lots of different examples. We also have a display so that the children can see the set up of that type of writing.
The first couple of weeks on a genre are very prescribed to make sure they understand the expectations, and then we allow some choice with the writing.
Each day we model what writing we expect for the day. Children work on this part only, this way we can ensure that all children stay on the right track.
For example, on Tuesday we would look at an example of a report, we would write and introduction together, then children would go away and write their own introduction.
During our shared writing times we use google docs for our modelling. This way it can be shown in both rooms. We often add to the doc with children's ideas during their writing time, and these can be seen from both spaces.

Here is an example of a shared writing doc. 

Sophie and I alternate weeks for who is in charge of shared writing.


Planning and Engagement

When planning our writing we always try to have a strong hook. We find our children are much more motivated when there is an experience/video/book that goes with their writing.  We also use pinterest to gather ideas for engaging writing topics.

Fiona's writing board
Sophie's writing board

We have a shared folder in google docs where all of our writing planning goes. To begin with we use to plan our weeks together, and have now moved to planning alternate weeks.

This is our planning folder

We have also found the new Sheena Cameron book really helpful with our planning. It has lots of great ideas for engagement also.

Next Steps

After reflecting on our writing programme we feel that we now need to work on the following things:

• Making sure that we plan the overview properly, not just making the resources
• Have goal checklist inside the cover of their writing books
• Have the goal they are currently working on displayed for them to see while writing. 

Our Research/Reading

We try to implement the the strategies in practise points from this article within a writing cycle.

We also found this article helpful when looking at how we would approach our shared writing times.