Pod+14

Teacher Inquiry - 2011

N﻿ame: ﻿﻿Katy How﻿ett

Appraisal Group: Katy Howett, Mary Leydon, Jan Olney, Caryn Magrat﻿h

Area of Professional Inquiry:  Writt﻿en Language

Specific Inquiry: Study the effects of motivation in writing

Agreed actions for development: Using topi﻿c﻿s for writing that have been considered for their motivation. Encourage all children to participate in activities so that they have personal experiences to relate to. Include discussions with other children during the planning stage as w﻿ell as before the re-crafting stage. Work with writing partners. See whether these chosen activities rather than recounts from their past or what they did at the weekend provide bett﻿er motivation and better writing progress than has been noticed in previous years.

Timeli﻿ne: __Term 1 __ Do initial piece of writing for the year for comparison at the end of the year. Grade it according to criteria. Look at length as well as deep features, and also the willingness of the children to write. __<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; line-height: 27px;">Term 1, 2 and 3 __ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; line-height: 27px;">Start introducing the writing opportunities to encourage the reluctant writers to write. __<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; line-height: 27px;">Term 4 __ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Do final piece of writing to be assessed according to the same criteria as the beginning of the year. Look at the improvement made by reluctant writers. Compare with improvement made by similar children in previous years.

<span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Monthly reflections on actions / results: __<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">March __ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Used a book - What a wedding - Jill Eggleton as motivation for descriptive writing, focussing on clothes. __<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">April __ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Wrapped lollies in tissue paper. Lots of discussion about thoughts, feelings and wonderings before they were even allowed to touch the packages. Due to time constrictions this activity went over a couple of days and at least 3 different sessions. It seemed to heighten the interest. One of the children said it was like reading a book where you always stop at the interesting bit until the next day. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Getting the children to hide an object inside a bag and then have these given out randomly. Again it seemed to increase the excitement of what was really a very ordinary object. Lots of work on thoughts, feelings and wonderings before the writing which were written down - working towards including them in the plan. Introduced the writing wall so that all children including the reluctant writers are able to work out what they should put into their writing. Hoping that by having a plan and easily accessible success criteria the reluctant writers will have some ideas to use in their stories.

__May__

Our writing topic for this term was diary writing. The British Library owns Robert Falcon Scott’s diary and has put a copy on line that the children can view. It also has an option to listen, with a voice over. The kids really enjoyed this because they could almost imagine it was Robert Scott actually talking. They listened to what he said and looked at how he wrote it. All of our social studies enquiry activities have helped motivate the children with the topic that they will be writing their diary about. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; line-height: 23px;">﻿ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; line-height: 23px;"> <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Professional development undertaken (readings/visits/discussions/courses: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">See comments made by Mary Leydon on prefessional readings and discussions done by the whole syndicate.

<span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Areas arising for further development:

<span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Summary of progress and achievement**:**