Professional Learning

Monday, May 6, 2019

Raising Student Achievement in Writing

I have been giving lots of thought about my writing programme in my class, and how I can best raise the student achievement in this. I was feeling bored with my writing programme and felt that it lacked purposed. This feeling has grown considerably since the Murray Gadd PLD, and I think if I felt like that, how so my kids feel?

Over the holidays I did a little reading around engaging students during writing and have decided to specifically target what they feel they are lacking. We used the literacy progressions last term, and students have been able to identify what they need to work on, and thus set goals around their own learning.  One area that seemed to be coming up frequently in the students goals was working on their spelling. Thus I have decided to start looking at how I can better run this in my class.

I started looking at Greek words, and we discussed what they meant. (This should help with reading decoding) Theses are now displayed on the wall and the students have access to them. I have also been looking at different spelling programmes. I have talked to other teachers about what they run, both here at school and at other schools. I thought about using the De Ath spelling programme as it was something I have used in the past at another school, but decided after talking to several other teachers to use the Spelling Under Scrutiny programme.

This programme is designed to target gaps in the students spelling knowledge and helps teach them rules around spelling.There are also activities around these, and I can target the gaps in the students knowledge. We started with the first 40 words of the spelling test today, I will get the students to finish it tomorrow. I am envisioning that they will have work around their spelling weaknesses each week to work on during writing time, as well as completing their writing.

I have also starting using a Literacy skills programme aimed at Year 7 & 8 this week. We have pre tested to again see our gaps, and are working through the weekly activities which are around different writing types, similes ect. Students seem to be enjoying them.

So far the students seem to be enjoying the difference in writing. I will continue to keep evaluating this and will use their writing to hopefully see an improve

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