Week 1 ALL in P2

I am hoping to make my inquiry this year about not just accelerating a small group of students but my whole class.  I started week 1 by meeting with each of my writing groups and asking them to share their student voice.

The questions I asked were:

Do you like to write? Why/Why not
What is something you would really like to learn to make writing easier for you?
Think of all the pieces of work you have written so far this year.  Which one would be your favouite and why?
Do you think you are a good writer?  Why/Why not?
Do you think your teacher and your parents think you are a good writer?  Why/why not?

Below is an example of what some of my boys had to say.

It is interesting to see the huge range of confidence in writing.  From "I suck" to "I am an awesome writer".  Spelling was something that nearly every student mentioned as something they want to improve so I need to really look at this.  Also hand writing featured quite strongly too.

Go Team ALL Mokoia!

I am so grateful for the wonderful team of teachers we have in our ALL team this year.  They are already sharing really positive stories about their experience so far (week 2!)  Yay!  I hope they all gain as much from this experience as I have.

The Learning Progressions and Assessing students work.

I have made this rubric for my students to use as a self assessment tool. (This is the first page only.)
Based on the Literacy Learning Progressions.

Year 2 ALL - We're on! It's all go!

Student voice at the end of 2014.

How did you feel about writing before we starting meeting as a group?

How do you feel about writing now?  Have your feelings about writing changed?

What is one thing you have learned over the last 10 weeks?

What was your favourite piece of writing?  Why was it your favourite?

Do you think you are a good writer? Why/why not?

Do you think your teacher and parents think you are a good writer?  Why/Why not?

Yay!  We have just been approved for our 2nd year of ALL.  After a successful board report and a lot of support and excitement from staff we are on our way!  Bring on 2015 - a year of new beginnings for Literacy at Mokoia Intermediate!

Teaching the Spelling Rules

 We are looking at the spelling rules today.  Students are choosing a rule, rewriting it in a way that they understand it and then practicing using it in their writing.  They are really enjoying this activity and the discussion is really interesting.  "Did you know...?", "I didn't realise this..." "I get it now.."

Spelling.

My boys have very little confidence when it comes to spelling.  They are actually really embarrassed about their abilities with spelling words correctly.  It is so bad that they will chose easier words in their writing because they are know how to spell it, rather than try a word they might get wrong.  Over the last few weeks I have stressed to them, that spelling is not something they need to worry about.  I just want them to try and then we can correct things together.

These boys love to use wonderful language and when I sent them out around the school on a "treasure hunt" the other day they came back with some excellent descriptive phrases and words to describe areas of our school on a cold and foggy morning.

When they got back to class, they highlighted the words they think they spelled wrong.  Then I typed up the list and we read through it together.  We noticed that we could tell what all the words were suppose to be, they had been sounded out really well.  They were just missing the knowledge of some of the spelling rules, so that is our next little goal.

The list:

Sliprey/Slipry

Concret/Concreat

Hops (basket ball)

Derw

Wavey

Unstraight parking

Intelgent

Drity

Slimmy

Senice fare

Red and witie

Suppoing

Mokoai

Murel

Artafichil

Steers

Shriveld / serveled/sreviled

Prikley

Sogey

stabel

Story writing

Boys were given pictures to choose from and a story planning sheet.  They could choose whether they worked by themselves or with a partner and they could choose to either type or hand-write their stories.

Poihipi and Douglas chose a picture of a rugby tackle and decided to write a story about the Rugby World Cup.  They planned and wrote their story together on a Google Doc.