The PM Writing Exemplar Big Books are essential to my writing program. The children are focussing on extending their writing to include a title, sequence of events and personal comment. Writing about Saturday and Sunday to sequence their recount is enabling my students to extend their writing and provide detail.
I’ll be extending this to include orientation during the next weeks. Deconstructing a number of recounts to identify items for an editing checklist will also be completed. The editing checklist needs to be constructed by the children after a number of collaborative group sessions for relevance, understanding and ownership.
A number of children are now writing on dotted third lines. During the next few weeks all children will move to using dotted thirds. At the beginning of the year the children use plain page scrap books, then plain lines are used before moving to dotted third lines. The children do not necessarily finish each book, as lines are introduced as part of a developmental continuum. The children’s personal comments tend to be the same at present, thus constructing a personal comment will be a teaching focus a long with writing an exciting title.
Cheers Nina
Nina Davis: Teaching & Learning in Australia 