The Write Way

 

Now we have letter formation and sounds underway, I am now looking at setting up my writing programme for Term 3. I have never waited this long to do formal writing. I am normally into the process as soon as swimming has finished. But what I have noticed is that the process is complicated and overloads wee minds if I haven't got foundations skills underway. It is kind of meaningless. But we have to write everyday - right?

How we got around that was by having writing rotations - but this was specifically around writing the kids' names, practising finger grip building with exercises like threading, rolls of paper, chalk, painting, whiteboards, letter practise and really affirming that the kids' efforts represented a message.

So I am looking at how to bring the structured literacy process to writing.

Helping children develop writing skills

I will also formulate my planning ideas and reflections via this blog.

This is a great blog from Leslee Allen who is arguing that storytelling comes before writing.

Part of what we have worked on too are the following videos and comments PRIOR to the writing process:

No one says it better than Leslee:

Children need specific phonics teaching, for many, their foundation in phonics is the barrier.  Spending a lot of time going over the very basic short/dominant letter sounds is a real benefit to children.  They need to be explicitly shown that the letter is just a symbol for the sounds that we can hear.  There is a strong connection here to the acquisition of mathematics here.  Encouraging children to see patterns, shape, make their own patterns etc will directly help their understanding of letters and numbers.

  I believe we need to be wary about how early we introduce more complicated blends etc, and once again this needs to be approached on an individual level.  Confusing some children by moving on too quickly is one of the biggest mistakes we can make. Once children understand that the letter is just a symbol for a sound, they can start to see how words are just these sounds joined together.  Understanding of rhyme is vitally important as well and this needs to be woven through and checked individually.

Vocab, this is one of the biggest barriers,  If you do not have the words to describe what you are trying to say, how on earth can you write it down?  Once again a play-based class is the perfect place to learn about my world out loud and to have loads of opportunities to talk.

Storytelling comes before writing

One of the biggest changes I have made is to change my writing to the middle block because it actually takes a lot of time - we have to float it on that sea of vocabulary, and we have to allow time for that to happen.