Murray Gadd Learning Story

Ginny’s Learning Story for Murray Gadd

My Learning Story

How it relates to the Registered Teacher Criteria

At the beginning of Term 3 Murray Gadd came to Valley for a staff meeting all about boys and writing.  I missed the staff meeting but thanks to some great colleagues I got the notes for the meeting.  On reading through the notes I realised that I am already doing a lot of what Murray suggested...   When I came into Room 18 writing was the boys least liked subject.  Since teaching in Room 18 I have tried extremely hard to find topics that will excite and engage them as writers, such as pirates, reports based on animals, dragons, recounting events that they have enjoyed etc.  I have also had high expectations of them that they will make progress in writing.  My classroom writing routines are very structured.  I have 4 groups and I see each group once a week but am giving feedback to other children incidentally during the writing session as well.  I have also taken the focus from quantity to quality writing.  However with all of that positive change some of the boys are not moving as much as I would like them to. At the end of his staff meeting Murray asked some questions. I really related to the questions ‘are our boys writing enough?’ and ‘do they believe in themselves as writers?’  Both of these questions made me reflect on my practice and see that I needed to add another aspect to what I was already doing.  A suggestion that Murray made is Speed Writing.  I have implemented this in my class once a week and the boys love it.  All the pressure is off them to produce something that I or anyone else will read and they can write on their own topics.  Everyone is on an even playing field.  Even my most reluctant writers are engaged in writing.They also enjoy seeing me as a writer alongside them as well.  They love writing on topics of their choice and also going back and adding more to stories they have already started the previous weeks.  Also the ownership that they can stop a piece of writing even if not finished and start something completely different.  We have a completely silent 10mins writing and at the end they can’t wait to share their writing with me if they want.   It makes complete sense to me that writers will become better with more writing just as readers become better with more reading.  Speed writing is now an integral part of my writing programme alongside the more structured teaching.  The question of do they believe in themselves as writers is being answered in a programme that now gives them success!

RTC 1 RTC 4 RTC 11 - Informal This whole piece is related to RTC 6 and RTC 8 RTC 12 RTC 4 RTC 6 RTC 7 RTC 7

Children using the i-pad to record themselves reading

The boys really love this and it was really easy to set up.  My next step will be to include a simple self assessment so they can say how they did.  

Focusing Inquiry

What is important (and therefore worth spending time on), given where my students are at?

• Through the past term I have worked with this group of students but made little progress in helping them to move onto the next progression.  I have focused on sentence structure and the structure of how to write a recount.  Now I need to focus more clearly on the next steps in the literacy progressions.
• For all of them the area that is needs focusing is on spelling high frequency words correctly as they all are writing stories that are interesting to read.
• Re-reading their writing to check it makes sence