Tag Archives: Differentiated Instruction

September 19, 2011 · 12:24 pm

Week 10: Final Week of Term 3, Victoria, Australia – Independent Writing – Genre: Recount

My Preps (5&6 year olds) are in their final week of Term 3. It’s wonderful to be their first school teacher, and I’m enjoying their enthusiasm for learning combined with their sense of fun. They love to dance, sing and create, and Friday afternoon is their special time when I’m the DJ and they, including their parents supply the weekly music. They’re an active and industrious group of young learners.

The random examples of independent Recount writing contained in this post displays their understanding of the Recount structure. I’m using the PM Writing Big Book exemplars and structure to scaffold writing development.

Extending my Prep’s writing is a focus and relates to our current inquiry. The children realise that their journal is a record of their personal history. They understand that detail in their journal will provide a better record of their experiences when they read their journal in future years.

I’ve included pictures of our WALT – ‘we are learning to’ and WILF – ‘what I’m looking for’ our success criteria. These are wiped and changed for different tasks. I’m very pleased with my Prep’s writing development, particularly their use and interest in punctuation and detail.

 

Cheers Nina

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September 10, 2011 · 10:53 pm

Week 8 – PrepD Student Led Interactive Writing: The strategy which supports and accelerates the writing development of young writers!

The key is students working collaboratively, sharing their learning, prompting each other and using skills and language used by teachers. Each student is engaged in the activity and committed to contributing with the support of their peers if needed. Groups can be structured to support children if needed or to extend children.

The Process:

Each child is identified by a color and all are given the opportunity to lead a group. Teaching leadership skills concurrently is essential. The children are given poster sized sheets to write on and colored markers. All students record their name down the side of the paper in their chosen color. This enables the teacher to assess the writing development of individual students.

I use PrepD Student Led Interactive Writing to assess and plan my weekly writing foci. It’s interesting to note that my students’ independent writing improves rapidly.  As with independent writing I’m looking for the transfer of my teaching into my students’ writing. Modelled, Shared and
Independent writing are also planned into my weekly program from week one.

At this stage of the year my students are able to identify their learning needs and will suggest a focus for a writing session. This is powerful! Some children…. and these children are 5 or 6 years old, will teach the writing focus or make suggestions for me to use in my teaching. This strategy extends highly able students, supports and develops the writing ability of students working at the standard and reluctant writers. It is my belief that PrepD Student Led Interactive Writing accelerates the writing ability of all students.

I have written about this strategy many times and provided numerous pictures and a description of my student’s writing development. Naming this strategy the PrepD Student Led Interactive Writing Approach recognizes my student’s commitment and success. They have a passion for writing and I can only hope that their enthusiasm continues as they grow. This strategy has been successfully used with older students.

The genre for the examples displayed in this post is Recount. The children were placed in mixed ability groups writing about a common experience. The Recount success criteria negotiated with my students was to include a title, sequence of events and personal comment. This is the format provided in the PM Writing Exemplars available at Nelson Cengage Learning.

Using WALT – ‘we are learning to’ and WILF – ‘what I’m looking for’ collaboratively developed with my students provides a clear success criteria and learning intension.

Post Script: 70 000 visits – Thanks for the support, comments, emails and sharing of your ideas. It is appreciated!

Cheers Nina

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July 25, 2010 · 3:37 am

The Cognitive Taxonomy Circle – A great visual support for planning for deeper levels of thinking (teaching & learning)

This was shared in another forum and I thought it would be worth sharing here. It’s a great visual planning diagram to view when thinking and planning opportunities for our students to develop deeper levels of thinking. The diagram identifies the activities and products related to Remembering, Applying, Analysing, Creating and Evaluating. Follow the link below the image.

Click and Link :  Cognitive Taxonomy Circle

Mastering Low-Level Content from Scott McLeod on Vimeo.

Excellent short video on Bloom’s Taxonomy: link above. 

Cheers Nina

P.S Julie, Rachael and Ebony – from the Northern suburbs. Thanks for emailing! Still working on the post to answer your questions.

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July 11, 2010 · 10:16 am

What is Differentiated Instruction?

Rick Wormeli: Keynote on RTI and DI at the CLMS Annual Conference, Feb. 26-28, 2010, in Sacramento. This is an excellent clip to show your school staff. Rick answers the questions teachers are asking. This is a ‘must watch’ clip! So what is differentiated instruction?

http://instructionalroundsineducation.ning.com/video/rick-wormeli-on-differentiated

Visit the Instructional Rounds ning, go to videos and view Rick Wormeli’s clip. It’s worth the visit.

Cheers Nina

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February 12, 2010 · 11:20 am

PrepD Student Led Interactive Writing – Differentiation – Preps (First year of formal education in Australia) – Language Experience: 5 days in and we’re composing! Student Led – Of course!

I said in my last post that I’d display a couple of photos of how I’ve set up our learning spaces in the classroom.  Space is tight, but it works.

This area is where we work on our reading and writing skills. Everything I need or the children need is in this space. They are learning quickly that where I sit, they sit in front of me. This allows the children to refocus for new learning experiences. It also gives them the opportunity to move and stretch. My space is limited, but I’ve been able to create these specific learning areas. I highly recommend teachers to try and organise different learnings spaces for the children. There is also a computer hub.   

This is our Big Book, oral language and numeracy area.  The white board is fantastic. The rest of the classroom has tables in groups. There aren’t many displays up as yet because we have only been back at school for a short time.

Our first Student Led Interactive Writing Session.

As a group the children have a collective knowledge of letters, we’ve looked at sentences, know they tell us something, have a capital letter, full stop and can be read.  They capably wrote their names in a colored texta down the side (removed from photo)  of their large poster sheet. We had talked about our experiences at school and as a group we came up with some class sentences for every group to ‘have a go’ at writing. Each child writes a word in the order of their names. Our sentences were, ‘I am at school’ and ‘I am in PD.’  I could hear them discussing the words, stretching them out, looking at the letter chart, working out how to write them and then ‘having a go’. 

The photo above shows the work of one group of students that I watched compose and write the two sentences. Their attempt at writing  ‘school’ is amazing. It will be wonderful watching their journey this year.

I’m using this strategy weekly, as I believe that this strategy combined with explicit teaching accelerates writing development. These children want to be writers!

I haven’t written many posts recently because I’ve been so busy setting up the grade, getting to know children and assessing.

Cheers Nina

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