3.4 Select and use resources
Demonstrate knowledge of a range of resources, including ICT, that engage students in their learning.
Year 6 English at Naracoorte Primary School
Persuasive writing was the focus in our English lessons for the first 5 weeks of Term 2 at Naracoorte Primary School, with at least one lesson a day spent developing new skills and understandings in persuasive structure, modality, emotive language and bias. Our persuasive writing wall (pictured top left) became a jointly-created and much-talked about focal point in our learning space built over the unit. I created an account with Teach Starter and found a colour coded list of high, medium and low modality words which feature on the far left of the persuasive writing wall. The students used these in their oral and written persuasive texts, and had the opportunity to add their own words as they found new ways of using modality in texts. Prior to featuring on the walls however, the students completed several sorting tasks - using words in debates to decide on their degree of modality so had a mini-reference system in their own books. The 'Tug-of-War' resources (middle left) were created as a class using an idea from an online teaching community. The students used post-it notes to develop their persuasive responses to a question after 'think-pair-share' and class discussion activities. The emotive debates sparked genuine and interesting conversations with the whole class, and the students referred back to this experience in later class discussions. In small groups, students created 'wow word' posters (example bottom left) to remind them to use adjectives, adverbs and modality words in their writing as part of a lesson inspired by Sheena Cameron's 'The Writing Book'. This was part of a lesson observed on my final placement, and my liaison commented that she admired by ability to 'pull out the exact goals and steps from the curriculum into exactly what the students need'. Prior to the lesson I had printed out an example of a 'wow word' that I felt was just above the vocabulary level for each individual students, and stuck these under the desks whilst the students were at recess. My class loved being surprised and excited by the novelty of the activity, they were quick to pull out dictionaries to discover the definitions for their words. They then created a coloured strip with their word, meaning and use in a sentence for our 'wow word' wall. Below are the comments received from my university liaison on observation of English, Maths and History lessons in Term 2, 2015. |
University liaison comments - Naracoorte Primary School 2015
Year 6/7 English at Noarlunga Downs Primary School
I was set the challenge of teaching poetry to my year 6/7 class who were decidedly against anything they thought was related to Shakespeare. Remembering my own reluctance to engage with anything poetic at school, I knew the resources I used to hook the class right at the beginning would be essential for our success. Enter spoken word poet, Sarah Kay, and her TED talk that captivated my class and inspired them to write. Click on the image to the right to find her talk. Realising the desire to relate to the curriculum content was the key, the poems we examined in class were mostly modern and created by young people. The anonymous, internet-sensation of the poem with two meanings had my class talking (in a positive way!) right from the beginning of another lesson. When we explored imagery in the famous 'Daffodils' by William Wordsworth, we discussed mindfulness and meditation guided by poetic language. One of the most powerful resources I discovered for scaffolding my students initial poetry writing was a simple template labeled "I am". The students used the prompts to create deeply personal poems, and found the beauty of self expression through poetry. Sharing these poems with each other, helped to develop a culture of celebration and growth. By reading their poetry, I gained valuable insights to my students thoughts, feelings and interests which helped me to develop stronger relationships and a more positive classroom environment. |
Professional Portfolio by Emma Caldwell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.