Heidi Songs rubric

 

Action plan and testing ideas/Implementation

Heidi Songs

Now that I have some tamariki underway with some basic sounds and formation, we are looking at how to gain independence in writing, using what we know as well as alphabet supports. Alongside that, to support oral language, we are doing some writing work alongside colourful semantics, and I also have two senior boys who are coming over for part of that process. Initially we are using Big Books.

Colourful Semantics is useful for tamariki who may find ordering and sequencing their language difficult, and it has been a good tool for my tamariki to process the 5Ws and construct a sentence that makes sense.

We are using sentence strips after we read our Big Book to identify the the who, the what doing etc.

To quote Number Agent's Leslee Allen: "If you have read any of my other posts on writing, you will know that I greatly value colourful semantics as a framework for building sentences. Much of what I have learned over the years has returned to sentence-level construction. Writing, like all areas of learning, is a skill built on many pieces of understanding that must come together to form the 'end' product we eventually see."

For assessment I am using the Heidi Songs rubric, which I have adapted with writing samples from my tamariki to show progress. It can be really difficult to assess writing at this young age because we don't have any suitable testing and we are not ready for easTLLe, and in with the new curriculum, we don't know what assessments will be available to us to use.

What I do know is that tamariki do go through developmental stages for writing, so the Heidi Songs rubric is helpful, and I can use it as a term portfolio-styled format to show growth. I think it is more authentic. We also have tamariki that still don't have the fine motor skills to support pen grip - so while we establish that, the rubric helps us track progress even on that level.

The Key Strengths & physical skills needed for handwriting:

Gross Motor Skills (Posture Base)
Gross Motor Skills (Bilateral Coordination)
Fine Motor Skills (Sensory Perception)
Fine Motor Skills (Hand and Finger Muscles)
Eye Tracking Ability.
Spatial Awareness.
Motor Memory.
Visual Memory.

Colourful semantics, developing the foundations of writing and the building of complete sentences forms the foundations of my initial approach to writing, and this is where I find myself this year with my writing programme. Says Allen: "Ultimately it all comes back to oral language and so, this is where we must start."