Primary Framework, Guided Writing session

The course today focussed teachers on developing Guided Writing opportunities as part of the Primary Framework. As we know, the Primary Framework builds on much of the work already done in the National Literacy Strategy, so we spent some of the day looking at some of the refinements.

The highlight was a presentation given by a Leading Teacher, Emma from Earls Colne, who demonstrated how Guided Writing was being run and developed in her own classroom. There were several aspects which I noted and will develop in my own classroom practice.

I was impressed to see how Emma had encouraged peer review and assessment of each others' work something which I do on a regular basis as an oral exercise. However, Emma had the pupils annotating and highlighting examples where pupils had met the success criteria. The children's books were 'alive' with comments and highlights, each one suggesting either success or areas for development / improvement.

We watched a clip from the Primary Framework of a class teacher sharing the Success Criteria on large sheets of paper around the room meaning that the children are able to access and refer to these throughout. In addition to these, there were also the indicators of success, like a checklist of things that needed to have been met to reach success.

Something that stuck in my mind from the course today is the shift from teachers controlling the learning to enabling learners to drive it forward for themselves. High quality teaching is now about providing the pupils with 'pathways' through their learning.

Forest Schools

This is a programme to encourage schools to take their children outdoors, no matter what the weather. The presentation today talked about how children in Foundation benefited from outdoor experiences, looking at fallen leaves, acorns, jumping over logs, following a 'night-line', firelighting and generally getting very muddy.

There are often so few opportunities to get outside in the curriculum, that this initiative was about developing the curriculum around outdoor adventure at a very early age. I thought it gave children the experiences they wouldn't ordinarily receive at home, and for the older children, especially, give them real-life experience for writing reports, developing oral literacy too.

The main issues for enabling this to happen will be identifying a local woodland that can be used and how to transport the pupils to the site. The school who presented this session used parents to drive the pupils to the woodland which isn't necessarily possible for all schools. A colleague suggested borrowing a minibus from the local secondary school as an alternative solution.

Escape to Castle Condor

To be honest, I found this presentation more difficult to follow, perhaps because I wasn't clear about the connection between the activity and it's influence on children's mathematical awareness. The programme was designed to support pupils with common errors that they made in the SATs mathematics test.

The stimulus of this work was the Castle Condor set of resources, which has been developed by the Essex SAIS Team. Pupils wrote playscripts and made storyboards for their stories and then performed them using a Digiblue camera to record the footage. I enjoyed hearing how the detective work was wide-ranging, from deciphering clues to taking finger prints.

Was the connection between this activity and mathematics about developing children's awareness of problem solving and investigative skills? If you read this and know more than me, please do comment below as I'd love to be enlightened!

Podcasting at Greenstead Junior School

Greenstead Junior School have been podcasting using an iPod Video device with a plug in microphone. The microphone makes use of the iPod's Dock connector and therefore makes recording children's voices and sounds very easy.

The teachers reported that pupils weren't at all familiar with hearing their own voices played back and quickly developed their ability to speak more concisely without the teacher giving input. Pupils also improved the quality of what was spoken after several practices and wanting their recording to be absolutely perfect without coughs, sneezes and whatever else!

A portable speaker system was also purchased to facilitate the playback of the iPod recordings.

It was suggested the whole kit cost around £200.

There were lots of opportunity to share the recordings with a wider audience using the Podcast function of sending it to iTunes and having the podcast feed available from there.

I really like the idea of using a portable device to record the sound rather than record straight into the computer. Portability is really important, especially when you consider learning taking place everywhere, including outdoors. I'd also like to find devices which are a bit cheaper than the iPod's and as in any school, accessibility to these devices is crucial for success if pupils make decisions about their usage rather than planned in the curriculum by the teacher.

Trees - at a woodland near you

This was taken at Norsey Woods, Billericay.

River close to over flowing

This bridge is just about able to take the volume of water.