Walk the Talk Day Nine

Writing
I tried out a couple of new ideas today with the students. I noticed that some of the students were having problems sequencing in order and identifying the main points in a story. I ran a workshop session where they copied the story Dionysus and Ariadne from the website and pasted into Notability.







I then showed the Narrative Framework on the Projector which has been made in Inspiration.
I asked the students to highlight 'Who' were the main characters in Green.

They then had to highlight the 'Where', 'When' and 'What' in different colours. After that we identified what the main problem/conflict was by highlighting in red. We then went on to highlight in blue the main points in the story and finally the conclusion in a different colour. At first students wanted to highlight whole paragraphs, but after discussion we were able to identify just the main points. They can use this information to fill in their Narrative Framework. From there they can add more detail and eventually share it to Pages for final editing. A target group of children will be expected to do this every time they start writing a narrative on a new myth or legend. 

Most of the children have managed very well with all of the Google Docs in the different curriculum areas, keeping up with the work that they need to do. There is still a small group that needs a bit more structure and scaffolding. I created a new doc that we printed out and is clipped to the whiteboard. They have to get this doc and tick off the tasks they achieve and then show me at the end of that session what they have done. It will take some training and the teacher needs to be on the ball following up on these students to make sure that they are on task and making good choices about their learning.

I didn't get much of a chance to take photos today as I was busy teaching students and talking to teachers, but I was able to catch this moment...

Sometimes an iPad alone is not enough (4 devices, 2 students!)