You tube

Yeah success,

Out writing samples were a success across the board last term. I would put it down to 2 reasons.
1. integration in meaningful topic - We had been studying disasters (in line with Christchurch and Japan earthquakes) We had had guest search and rescue speakers, Researched and written persuasive articles about which disasters were the worst kind, and read disaster recounts.
2. You tube - we watched first hand filmings of those disasters (sounds a little morbid but greatly motivated my year 5/6 boys).
After a morning watching our chosen disaster we headed back to class and wrote a first person narrative recount of our time in a disaster. THe only planning being what was i doing before the disaster, during the disaster and after the disaster.

In a class of many struggling writers for whom motivation and success in writing is low I was very pleased with some of the outcomes. Many stories mimicked exactly what they had seen in particular video details.

How else can video motivate and create excitement about storytelling?

The Drama of Writing!

Some of our best writing this year has come through drama as a stimulus for writing. In recounts we have used role play of stories, with the children taking it in turns to be each character, e.g. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, this has helped with the who, what, where and how, and with discussion and modelling the children have started to add direct speech to their writing. Drama has also helped with holiday recounts, we played charades in groups and pairs to brainstorm and recall events. We also went through an imaginary door to a place we had been, we then described the scene using our senses, and then brought an object back throught the door with us to describe. This helped with the orientation of the recount, the order of events and adding personal response. We also used drama to write a recount of the school x-country, acting out again the stages and discussing; where we were, what was happening at each and how we felt. From this some children started to use similies in their writing as well as direct speech. If anyone has any other experiences with using drama to motivate writing please comment.

Recount writing

WALT: Writing an interesting recount. using descriptive language. 

I tried using these early in the year - the children were engaged and continued trying on their own afterwards on the classroom computers. Initially I had the children watch the short animation and then write what had happened. The next day we completed the interactive and re wrote with improved adjectives. We probably did 2-3 different examples, and each time I marked for describing words. Many children were able to double and triple the amount of adjectives used, and they thrived on learning a few new words we hadn't heard of in the options menus. 

We followed on to create adjective charts for our senses in class inline with descriptive writing - I could have probably done some verb and noun work too to increase the vocabulary even more. Next I would need to think about how to continue the more sophisticated vocabulary and describing through other genre.

Each of the links below progressively helps to to write more and more complex recounts. Start at the beginning and work your way through them. The first level is the picture. It has a reading age around 8yrs. But you could use the short animations on their own with younger children to promote writing a sentence for each part.


http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L1280&pin=TSNFWD&userid=3900

http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L1281&pin=IVXQGB&userid=3900

http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L6193&pin=SLXVUT&userid=3900

Thanks to digistore.tki.org.nz for these resources