Technology Departmental Meeting 20/05/21

This is an example of peer teaching. The idea is to go beyond the usual support we give students for a writing task, i.e. paragraph templates, sentence starters and examples.  Back in the 1960s Halliday was responsible for us adopting the non-grammar position because native speakers of English intuitively know the structure of the language. Many of our students do not understand the difference between the spoken and the written form of English. Many of our students must get despondent when their attempts to write a fluent paragraph fail. The point of the posters and the shared writing task is to make fluency and content issues explicit.  The use of the functional grammar approach here is a way to reduce to a minimum the number of features students must focus on in order to improve their writing. No one wants to overload teachers with yet more learning initiatives but it is hoped that teachers can help students with these basic grammar features: noun groups, opinion statements or modals, and verb groups. This, combined with shared writing tasks and the white board presentations, encourages students to take risks. The instant feedback on the white board also works wonders. I'm happy to work with class on a specific writing task. All I need is a student exemplar of the finished product. I'm happy to take the written model and adapt it into a few literacy tasks and then to work with a class on a shared writing task and presentation. Bish bash bosh but never bosh bash bish. Shared Writing Task and Group Presentations

Friday's Slam at the Staff briefing involved a summary of working with Hinerau Anderson on scaffolding reading tasks and on monitoring student comprehension.  Climate Change is a huge topic and the authors of each text exhibit an inherent expectation the reader has a huge amount of background knowledge. Often our students do not have an understanding of these huge topics, so the scaffolded reading tasks are used to make comprehension skills explicit while at the same time bringing the content to the fore. This is achieved by setting tasks that encourage students, in small groups, are to talk about the text.  The teacher was able to monitor student progress in comprehension by prompting students to improve their summary writing. When a student claimed, in their summary of the text, that he or she 'learned a lot,' the teacher was able to quickly prompt the student. This involved asking the student to detail exactly what they had learnt. The student was encouraged to use topic words from the text and they were also asked to explain why this information was relevant or important.  The use of authentic texts was also important along with provocations and enquiry prompts. Texts on what students can do themselves about reducing greenhouse gases and complex texts about carbon isotopes were also found for the students. This was done to avoid the rabbit hole student use of material from conspiracy theorists. That can wait for another day. The next step is a windows and mirrors moment where texts will be selected which look at the effect of global warming on Pacific Island and on New Zealand Glaciers.

Literacy Strategies - Year 10 Project | Climate Change and Game Development