Inquiry 2018: Not Maths But Using Language

I have been thinking about how I motivate my students to write and felt it was time to try something new.  The children practise writing stories most days with a variety of motivation but I felt there needed to be more noticing of things like language used, attempted spelling using alphabet sound knowledge and even using punctuation and gaps between words.

To begin, I let the children choose what they would like to take a photo of.  This meant that they had to remember how to take a photo by going into a blank page in EE and using the camera to take a photo, crop it and then lock it up the top of the page.

The next step was to think of two sentences to write about their chosen picture.  They were able to factually record something or use their imagination and predict what might be going to happen in the picture.  The children were very engaged on the task, so much so that chatter all but ceased as they worked away to think of a sentence and write it down. They wanted to get that part of the task over so that they could begin to type and see what their story looked like all neatly typed.

Not all of the children had previously used typing so I took groups and showed them how to type.  Again this required concentration to find the correct letters, put spaces between words, use capital letters and full stops and lock the text under the picture.  When they finished I put their work up on the Apple TV which spurred those still typing to finish the task.  They were very proud of the new skills they had learnt as well as the stories they had produced.  They enjoyed having an audience for their work and reading it out to others.

It was an exciting exercise that engaged the children and got them not only using language but also their digital skills.  They were able to learn new skills, create a story digitally and share it with their class mates.

Tupou chose to write about a sealion.

Alexandra wrote about a puppy in a reader.

Maggie liked the story about Ben and his teddy.

Chevelle wrote about Little Bear riding Monkey's big bike