Every Thursday I work with four students from Mr. James' classroom on developing their writing skills. Today we revised the narrative story structure and simple scaffolds for planning. I did a lot of modeling and demonstration during previous sessions.
Our learning intention was to complete the planning and the first draft of a story in 40 minutes. After revising the story structure and success criteria for our session in general, I offered each of my students a different picture story starter. I pointed out that the picture shows the beginning of the story.
When my writers began to create their stories, I was closely monitoring them, providing indirect instruction and guiding their thinking. I had only four students in the group and that gave me a chance to confer briefly with each student, discussing ideas for writing, asking questions or highlighting potential challenges.
Even such brief exchanges provide our students with opportunities to think about how they learn. Such conversations develop our students' metacognitive skills and language - they begin to reflect on their thinking process, choice of strategies and realize what they should do better next time. Meaningful teaching situations like this can help our students to become more independent, as they are not told explicitly what mistakes they made but are given a chance to make their own conclusions.
At the end of our session, one of my students was able to see her own flaws and gaps and hopefully will apply this new understanding.
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| Dailyn and Khameliya had a very productive writing session. |
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| Indirect instruction in the form of questions triggered Raingsey's thinking. |
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