Thursday 13 June 2013

Symbolism and the European Union

Year 7 and 8 are currently improving their Literacy through learning about the European Union. This week we've been looking at symbolism, particularly in flags. We've also enjoyed reading The Mystery of the Golden Stars, which we're using as a springboard for other activities such as a debate.

Here are some examples of our symbolism work, laminated ready to go up on the wall:







Punctuation

Punctuation is always an ongoing area of focus in my classroom for all year groups, no matter what topic we are studying. My T.A. has helped me produce these punctuation booklets for discrete practise.



The activities all focus on Capital Letters, "Speech Marks" and Commas for Clauses (e.g. My dog, who is called Pickle, likes to bark in the garden.) Pam Hook , the SOLO Guru, has kindly offered to send me a table which will explain how I can 'SOLO-ise' punctuation, as I'm still confused about that at the moment.

Thursday 6 June 2013

Learning Intentions, Learning Objectives... part 4

Okay so some more blogging on Learning Intentions. Year 9 have just started a huge project: "Spoken Language of a Public Figure". Here is an example of an exercise students completed which examined how rapport can be built with the audience. This particular student is getting towards the top of the group. I've also included a close up of my SOLO Taxonomy Learning Intentions for the project:


 
 

 
 
Any feedback concerning my SOLO Learning Intentions is very welcome, please contact me via my Twitter: @teachesliteracy .

Using highlighters to check punctuation progress

An ongoing focus in my classroom is improving our use of punctuation. To check on individual progress I had students copy a mini-story from the board, and they had to put in capital letters, commas and speech marks. We then peer marked the work. Markers had to highlight the things they thought were correct, incorrect or missing in three different colours. I could then quickly see how both the original student and the marker are getting on. Plus the highlighters emerging from the cupboard always seems to send a stir of excitement around the room!



Tuesday 4 June 2013

What's my SOLO Level?

For those of you who'd like to download a free copy of my SOLO Level Assessment sheet, you can find a PDF here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5wKj1KHNZvSQ0xMYjIxdGVwRnM/edit?usp=sharing

If you share this, a link back to me would be appreciated!


Thursday 23 May 2013

Update on yesterday's punctuation lesson with Year 9

Just an update on yesterday's punctuation lesson with Year 9. Here is an example of the work that was produced (this student is in the middle of the group):


 
Now I just need to figure out how to assess this under SOLO... Any advice/suggestions very welcome! 

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Learning Intentions, Learning Objectives...part 3

I modified my creative writing Year 9 Learning Intentions today so that they were aligned with SOLO Taxonomy. The focus was on using a variety of punctuation with accuracy. Here they are:


I found this really difficult to do, because the SOLO verbs don't seem to easily lend themselves to demonstrating correct use of punctuation in my mind. I'm not particularly satisfied with my second Learning Intention and I want to change it, but I don't know how! I need to have a longer think about it; any suggestions for how to improve number 2 would be extremely welcome. You can find me on Twitter! Also I am still, as ever, interested in seeing your Learning Intentions/Objectives!

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Learning Intentions, Learning Objectives..... part 2

Continuing from yesterday's post...

This half term Year 7 and 8 have been improving their Literacy by investigating Climate Change and Sustainability. Year 7 and 8 have a NC (English) range of levels from 1a/2c to 3a/4c. Today I began a series of lessons that have the outcome of writing and performing a persuasive speech for the Head to make our school more 'eco-friendly'.

Last night I re-wrote my Learning Intentions for the first sequence of lessons to make them align with Solo Taxonomy. You can see them below:

 
 
I am happy that these are well aligned to SOLO, and because I have done this my Success Criteria and assessment of their understanding/progress is very clear (this is why I like using SOLO so much!)

Here you can see some of the work we've started on over three lessons today. First of all we listed ideas on our brainstorms, and then wrote sentences to explain our reasoning. Imagining and predicting wider impacts will come in future lessons:


 
 
I have also been talking to Natalie Ford on Twitter about SOLO Learning Intentions and she has given me some interesting ideas to think about, which I'm definitely going to develop over the next few weeks:
 
 
 
(Sorry, haven't figured out how to embed Twitter conversations yet...!)
 
I'm still really interested to share Learning Intentions/Objectives and SOLO with anyone else, so if you'd like to share yours with me I'd really appreciate the development opportunity! You can upload them to Twitter and tag me in them!
 
 



Monday 20 May 2013

Learning Intentions, Learning Objectives...

Currently for in-house CPD we have been reading Embedded formative assessment by Dylan Wiliam. This term we have been focussing on Chapter 3: Clarifying, Sharing, and Understanding Learning Intentions and Success Criteria. I have enjoyed this particular chapter because it doesn't re-invent the wheel; it simply tells you/reminds you what you know already and re-explains the relevance in a clear manner. (As an aside, I think it would make excellent reading for Trainees/NQT's in any subject.)

Following on from this reading I started to really focus on my Learning Intentions, as I realised that they weren't as precise as they could be. I've been teaching a few years now and it wasn't really an area I had visited since my NQT year. When I used 'understand' in an Intention, I knew what I meant by it, and perhaps I did adequately paint a picture of it in my Success Criteria, but I don't think it was actually the correct choice of word to begin with. Can a student really 'understand' in one lesson? I think the term is too broad and imprecise. I've been working to avoid the use of this word. Additionally, I was unhappy with how my context was too closely mixed in with the actual skill I wanted students to learn/demonstrate.

I've put some examples of my revised Learning Intentions below. They are for a Year 9 class (English NC Levels 3a-5c) and are in the context of early preparation for the Information and Ideas GCSE English paper:



I still don't think these are perfect, for a start they aren't aligned with SOLO Taxonomy , which is what I want to be using across my entire Curriculum for 7, 8 and 9, so they do need changing in that regard. Additionally I'm unsure as to whether I like having the Success Criteria mixed in with the Intention in this way; I am leaning towards comfortably accepting this mixture but I do think further scrutiny would do no harm. I do also provide a seperate, more detailed Success Criteria, usually in the form of a tick-sheet to go with the work. (This also easily affords the opportunity for peer, self and teacher assessment as it only needs a few extra columns adding!)

With Year 7 and 8, I tend to use WALT (We Are Learning To) and WILF (What I'm Looking For) a lot more as it seems to help them understand our learning journey/progression a lot easier.

If anyone would like to share their Learning Intentions with me I would be really interested, as I'm always wanting to develop and refine my own! Perhaps you could upload them to Twitter and tag me in them? I would welcome any feedback on my Intentions here, positive or otherwise...! I'd be interested to know if you have students write Intentions down (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, sometimes they're pre-printed on the sheet) and if you always share the Learning Intention with the class or not? I don't always think it is appropriate to, and sometimes it can be insightful not to and then ask "so, what do you think we were learning this lesson then?" for a Plenary!

Thursday 16 May 2013

Climate Change: Persuasive writing

This half term Year 7 and 8 have been investigating Climate Change. We have assessed our understanding of the issue with SOLO Taxonomy. This has culminated in writing a persuasive letter for our school newspaper to encourage both parents and students to reduce their carbon footprint. We are still in the rough draft stages.

Persuasive writing is not a new topic to us, last half term we investigated the Romans and wrote persuasive letters about Gladiator fighting. This time we had to revise the techniques and come up with some snappy sentence starters before we began to plan the structure of our letters. You can see our progress below, we've still go some way to go before we finish!



 
This is a writing frame that 3 students came up with. The topic of the paragraph is in blue, the 'super sentence starter' is in red, and the persuasive technique is in black.
 

 
Here you can see two rough drafts. They haven't stuck exactly to plan, but that's okay, I do encourage students to 'go with the flow' sometimes.
 
Next we will read our letters and check for capitals, commas and full stops (highlighters will probably be used) and then we'll do a little bit of peer assessment- mostly along the lines of "my favourite sentence was...because...I think you could improve this sentence...by...") Students can then make a few changes before I mark it, and finally they can write it up in neat.

Wednesday 15 May 2013

What is Literacy with Miss Courtney?

This mind map explains what we do each day!  

SOLO 5 Min Lesson Plan

For those who'd like to download a free copy of my SOLO Five Minute Lesson Plan, you can find a PDF here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5wKj1KHNZvScWwxSF9rdE5teFk/edit?usp=sharing

I got this idea from Teacher Toolkit (Twitter: @teachertoolkit) and also Pam Hook (@arti_choke). Please feel free to share, but a link back to me would be appreciated!