Teaching Writing

I stumbled across this article and found it to really confirm a lot of my beliefs about teaching writing. Allowing children to write for their own purposes and enjoyment. Not teacher prescribed purposes. The idea that all children initially enjoy "writing" until the become discouraged particularly resonated wth me. All the students in our class are celebrated as "good" writers with something worth while to say. They enjoy writing and never have nothing to write about. I worry that as they move through the school and have to learn "text types" and write to "please the teacher" they will become scared to take risks and find writing pointless. Something that continues to need developing in my practise is giving the student's texts more audience. We try to publish some on the blog but it's still not much. They also read to their peers so I suppose they are having the opportunity to share their writing in that sense also.

https://literacyforpleasure.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/what-if-almost-everything-we-thought-about-the-teaching-of-writing-was-wrong/

2016 - End of Year Summary Meeting

Tuesday 22nd November 2016

1.  What is your biggest success?

• The working relationship with Tara - it has been consistent, supportive and allows for both of us to support each other and the kids.

2.  Where are you at with your goals?

• Reading Recovery (RR): Very successful in supporting RR kids and all kids.  Awesome progress across the class.  RR strategies are making a difference - cross over of prompts ...YAY!
• Creation if successful programmes in a collaborative environment:  Worked well together to accelerate progress.  Exciting acceleration noted (Sarah B). Ensured maths has still been a focus - seeing neat stuff in maths.  Evidence is the engagement of the children.  Student-led "I wonder" questions have driven inquiry - has been really engaging for kids.  Development play in the afternoon has shown an decrease in the aggressive / angry behaviour.  Both teachers on the same page.  Wondering about how much we include Petera - is it enough, do we have enough leadership of his programme?
• Assessment - anecdotal notes:  Using modelling books, but still not at a point where we are happy with this.  Tried digitising it, but it is a challenge to capture evidence when teaching.

3.  Target students - what difference have you made? Evidence?

• RR kids (Anna-Rose, Corey, Shaun) - see assessments
• Sarah has made great progress - evidence in assessments
• Te Anga - just see where he is at in class and the playground.  Major change!

4.  Changes for 2017?

• Will be different with less RR hours and more in-class together time
• Want to include ideas from Rototuna School writing observation
• Many structures will stay the same
• Inquiry has been different - better this term
• Open times for transition visits are good.  Need to strengthen the EC centre visits - Rikki needs to be there!  Need to keep taking ex-pupils with us
• Wondering from Rikki: Where does Te Whāriki fit with the thinking about your programme?

5. SLT support for 2017?

• Continuing support for us to try our ideas out in class
• Support to allow us to continue our PD around writing in our class
• Ongoing support for class behavioural/pastoral need
• Clear guidelines for expectations and "checking up/checking in on" around things like appraisal/class blogs
• Just being there when we need it :)

Appraisal Goals

As the year winds down I guess it's time to start looking at the goals I set for myself at the start of the year.

1) Successfully participate and complete Reading Recovery Training to support target students across classes, colleagues and our own class practice.

The Reading Recovery Training that I have got this year has been really beneficial to both my reading recovery students and our class students. I have seen all my students, so far, on Reading Recovery be successfully discontinued. Even my most challenging student is now looking as though she will be successfully discontinued by the end of the year. Within our class programme, I have had more students meet the after 1 year reading and writing standards than before. The main teaching techniques that have crossed over from reading recovery to my classroom techniques are probably the prompts that I use to encourage students to become more self

2) Create successful programmes to accelerate and engage students collaboratively with Tara and Petera in all curriculum areas linking to the NZC, with a particular focus on target students in literacy and social/emotional skills.

This year I feel that we have successfully accelerated and engaged students across the curriculum. We have had great results in reading and writing, with very encouraging 6 year observational surveys. We have also seen some great achievements in maths. Our inquiry this term has been the most engaging as it's been very student led. The topics have been changing quickly and the students are really loving the opportunity to ask all their "I wonder" questions. We have also been using our developmental play in the afternoon to model and develop social/emotional literacy. There has been an improvement in the amount/intensity of aggressive behaviour by some students.

3) Collaboratively record anecdotal notes around students' ongoing learning and progress to guide and support further learning and to provide evidence when reporting back to parents and colleagues with a particular focus on target students.

We have been using our modelling books mostly for this. Although we've tried to do this digitally, it has been difficult to keep it up to date as we go for some lessons - particularly writing. We do use digital tracking of more formal assessments effectively.

Observing at Rototuna School

This week we got to go and visit Rototuna School. What they are doing there for writing sat very well with a lot of my own beliefs and philosophies about learning to write. They have a huge focus on teaching the "how to" of writing rather than worrying about the product. Students are given a whole class motivator at the start of writing where oral language is modelled and extended. They are then sent off to write independently after sharing their idea with the teacher and class. (Giving those who aren't sure what to write about some more thinking time and ideas). They are not required or expected to write about what they talked about on the mat.

Once students are writing, the teacher calls down small groups to do short lessons on spelling or sentence structure things. e.g. 1 group was working on the short a sound. They did 5 minutes of work around this sound - writing words that have it and circling the letter writing the sound before going back to write independently.

The teacher did not work with the children on their actually piece of writing. At the end of the lesson she will roam and give "over the shoulder" conferencing before everyone comes down to share and celebrate.

Students were identifying their own successes in their books. Circling capital letters, fullstops etc.

The big focus for explicit teaching and assessment was around phonological awareness and sounds.

I am excited to make some plans that use a lot of these ideas for next year. Particularly having Tara and I in the classroom together more, I think we can really make some huge progress for our kids. We also hope to trial some of these ideas before the end of the year, especially with our students who are not yet achieving as well as we would like.

Link to notes from observation
Link to SEED website

Kindy Visits - Relationships with ECE centres

Today we did our Kindy Visit day. We decided to take 2 students with us to each centre which was really nice and broke the ice a wee bit. The students played at the centres for a short time and read a book to some children. We spoke with the teachers and students, particularly the ones we know are coming to us. We dropped off the new pamphlets as well. I think this is a positive thing for us to do to build those relationships but it was a full on day. I'm glad Rikki came with us too as it made it look like a real team. Two of the centres wanted to talk about how transitioning kids to school and whether what they are doing is effective, so that was good to have those discussions.

Holiday Oral Language Reading

Over the September break Tara and I did a lot of reading about Oral Language and how to develop it further in our class. Specific summaries of the reading we did can be found in the link below.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7PFZ93wCjTaSjB5Ukl0MTdOSzQ

The overall conclusions we have drawn from all this reading is that we want to embed more oral language development in all areas of our programme. We are specifically conscious of this in our inquiry lessons and developmental play. However, we haven't done too much specific planning around it as you never quite know where the discussion is going to go. I'd like to do more retrospective planning as to what we have covered but haven't found a way to make this manageable.

I had wanted to do some Oral Language testing, particularly on some of our lower students and then another test at the end of the term but with other testing and commitments it will have to wait til next year now.

Promoting Our School

This term a big focus for Tara and I has been about promoting the school. Tara created new pamphlets about our school and I have created pamphlets about transitioning to school, The Turaki Way. This has taken a lot of time but is hopefully going to have a positive impact on the image of the school and encourage some new enrolments. My latest venture is to create a new website for the school. I have been looking at other schools' websites and asking staff for their input as to what we think is important to have on the website as a starting point. I am starting it off quite simply as we can always add to it. I think the image of our school can only be improved by having a vibrant and informative website.

Here is the website so far http://emmat00.wixsite.com/mysite

Writing - Teaching Genres

Today at staff meeting there was some discussion around teaching genre's again. I really like the idea of teaching the genres through reading and then letting the students use the reading as models to support them when choosing an appropriate text type for the purpose. Currently in our class we don't really explictly teach genre at all, rather teach what is needed depending on the purpose. However, we don't then link that to different text types in books. I wonder whether this is necessary at our level anyway?

Target Writing Feedback 12/9/16

12/9/16

Writing

We do whole week writing and add to it every day.

Trying to focus on oral language based writing. We start with a motivation that the children can see and touch. From this we then do a whole class brainstorm on Monday to get descriptive language from all students. This is good as the children who do not have a lot of oral language hear their peers talking and describing the item. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we do group writing based around the motivation. We do not tell the children what they are to write. Our teaching prompt is “Tell me about this” so we have students writing what they want related to the item. All of our writers are engaged as their is not a lot of fail as they lead their writing. We are getting some amazing descriptive and creative pieces of writing from all students.

Hopefully going to visit Rototuna school next term to observe their writing programme (Pam spoke earlier in the term about it).

Weekly -spelling testing using reading rockets - part of reading and writing rotations independent practise. Testing on a Friday. Children beginning to remember they can use the cards when they do their writing.

Use letter cards to help them sound out unknown words.

They are all expected to “write” from the very first day. Small groups work with the teacher. Teacher aide is used to support the more able writers so the teacher can work with lower writers.

Some of our children’s problem is still formation etc. So something to work on for them is more handwriting.

Want to have an even bigger focus on Oral language next term and extending this - sentences types etc.

Publish writing

Behaviour Changes

This term has had a big focus on behaviour. One particular change we have made to our class programme was splitting reading. We had a lot of problems during the second half of reading time. Since we made the change there has been a big improvement in the data.

Pre-change behaviour graph Weeks 1-3 Term 3

Post-change behaviour graph Weeks 4-6 Term 3

Reading Recovery

One of the biggest difficulties I've had with OL's progress is the speed at which she is able to process even known words. To improve this I have begun reading her known texts with her. This more choral reading type approach means she has to keep up with a more fluent speed and phrasing. She can't keep dropping back and repeating things over and over. This seems to have had a positive impact on her running record text reading also. It seems to be faster and better phrased with less repetition of words or sounds.

Team Meeting - Oral Language with Pam

What is effective teaching of Oral Language for natural English speaking students?

Books to look into.....

Are teachers teaching Oral Language explicitly or informally catering for Oral Language needs?

Children that can't express themselves/communicate their needs/wants/feelings are of course more likely to have behaviour issues. 

Our feelings were that morning talk, news, think, pair, share etc were not explicit teaching but rather just allowing opportunities for talking. 

Any lesson can become an Oral Language lesson but we need to spend time explicitly teaching rather than just incidental.

Teaching just a lesson from a book just because it looks good/fun doesn't specifically cater for their needs...

Learning through talk - p. 42-43 has good ideas for expectations at School Entry, At the End of Year 1, At the End of Year 3.

Try JOST with Hunter. Use Oral Language expectations, Communication Processes and Blank Language Scheme etc to look at what gaps he might have.

file:///Users/Teacher/Downloads/Definitions+of+achievement+for+National+Standards.pdf

14th June 2016 Incredible Years – Early Childhood perspective PD Alison Flutey

Just found these notes.....

14^th June 2016

Incredible Years – Early Childhood perspective PD

Alison Flutey

If children can’t manage themselves behaviourly then they can’t “learn academically” We see this time and time again and the time and effort put into "improving their behaviour" pays off in the end.

How can we continue to build/develop relationships with our “difficult” students…

What other proactive strategies do we need to use?

Suggestion not to use “endearments” – not professional – should use names. I personally think that some children may never be shown much love and it's my nature to use "endearments" towards all my students.

Children notice if you don’t talk to them or don’t talk to their parents…..

Using parents’ names is important too.

Our play “golden time” in the afternoon is a great way to build relationships. Letting children take the lead and sitting at their level. Modelling desired behaviours along side them, rather than taking over.

Commenting is much more useful than questioning. – giving positive attention to desired behaviour.

Emotional commenting is very powerful for our vulnerable children.

-       Use words like calm, proud, excited, confident, frustrated, disappointed

‘Using when and then’ & ‘Short commands’ – feeling like we use these well – particularly with our difficult children. What about when these aren't working......

Remembering to praise for little things

What choices can we give to our children to help them do the right thing? You need to do your work vs are you going to do it by yourself or with my help? Maybe this will work better than "when/then" for some

Waiting rather than sharing – Learning to wait is more difficult but more helpful than having to share – May need to use commenting some more on that.

Ignore behaviour not the child – praise the minute they are doing the right thing to feed back into the self esteem.

Try not to show the children how frustrated you might be feeling with them.

Children coming to you upset start with “well done you walked away”.  Emotional/social coaching. Then what would you like to do about that?

Need to get back to doing little certificates/notes home

Slow down and make time for positive praise.

Oral Language

After Pam's PD at staff meeting the other day I have a new increased desire to do a better job of developing our children's oral language. At Reading Recovery training this week we also looked at Oral Language which was very well timed. We were given an article from Clay's (2014) By Different Paths to Common Outcomes: Literacy learning and teaching,  which focuses on the relationship of talking with reading and writing. It suggests some things teachers can do to support children in becoming more controlled with their Oral Language.
(p. 136)
1) Create a rich context for learning
thinking about
- who talks to whom?
- what do they talk about?
- how often?
- do they listen and repeat or exchange language naturally

2) Increase language learning opportunities
Oral language learning opportunities during school hours are naturally reduced by the shift of individual to group learning. Schools need to design experiences to maximize opportunities for language construction.

3) Understand the children learn language most easily through conversation
- arrange joint focus on an activity
- extend wait time
- negotiate meanings
- personalise conversations
Does the classroom programme create conversations?

4) Consider what may make a child reluctant to speak
- shyness
- limited language control
- fear of failure
So what do we do to avoid this?

5) Recognise the importance of reading aloud to children
Children need to be exposed to a range of language structures including ones beyond their current capabilities.

6) Create a need to produce new language
Create experiences that tempt children to have something to say

7) Arrange for new sources of language
Model good language

The list continues but these were the key ones for me.
Next term Tara and I really want to have a big push on Oral Language. I have found many books to read to help to develop a programme that encourages and supports the development of oral language in our class.
If I can test a sample group of children using the ROL by the end of the term and then we can look at whether we think some progress has been made at the end of the year.

Phonics for Reading

I came across an interesting article the other day which I was very quick to disregard as it did not fit my beliefs about reading. It was slamming reading recovery techniques and promoting a fully HF word and spelling rule based approach to teaching reading. Today I found a nice counter blog article. This article focuses on the importance of meaning in reading. And that while it may be "guessing" at times, using the context of the story to attempt an unknown word, is bringing meaning to the text, and is that not what reading is.... This article really backs up my style of teaching reading, "learning to read involves much more than learning to sound out letters and identify words."
When I can find the other article again I will attach it also. Very conflicting points of view.

https://literacyforpleasure.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/why-children-should-be-encouraged-to-only-ever-use-phonics-as-a-back-up-strategy/

Writing Progressions

Below is what is stated in the Literacy Progressions for The First Year of School. I feel we are doing a good job of teaching writing and our we seem to be following the progression below pretty well. I'm not sure that our students really understand the purposes for their writing so perhaps this is something to talk about more, particularly with our more advanced writers.

"At first, there is a high level of scaffolding as teachers help students to:

• hold an idea in their head long enough to write it down
• say, hear, and record the predominant sounds in the words they want to write
• write from left to right and leave spaces between words
• form letters accurately.

Gradually, the support alters as teachers help students to build and strengthen their processing systems and to create longer, more complex texts. Students learn to:

Studies of effective teachers have shown that they continually make explicit the connections between reading and writing. Teachers who have a grasp of this reciprocal relationship recognise that writing is neither secondary to reading nor something to be taught separately from reading.

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, page 113

• experiment with capturing words from their oral vocabulary
• hear and say the initial and final sounds and some dominant medial sounds in the words they want to write
• recognise and identify common sounds in different words
• use their developing visual memory to consistently encode (spell) some known words correctly
• make close attempts to encode words by using their developing knowledge of phoneme–grapheme relationships, which enables them to:
  • understand that words are made up of sounds and that sounds are written with letters
  • write all consonant sounds, and represent some vowel sounds, in at least one way
  • attempt to record the sounds within words in sequence
• make close attempts to encode words by noticing visual similarities to known words
• attempt to use capital letters and full stops as they develop their understanding of sentences
• reread what they write as they are writing and read (or retell) their writing to themselves and others.

Students in the first year of school are becoming increasingly aware of the purposes for their writing, and they use a range of text forms. They can express their ideas in increasingly interesting ways as they gain control over using more complex language structures, including varied ways of beginning sentences."

http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions/The-first-year?q=node/11

Literacy Learning in the First Year

This morning I have been writing reports. I went back into the Literacy Progressions to look at next steps etc for the reports and then had a bit of a look at the "The First Year" section. This outlines the sorts of things students should be doing before the "After 1 year" standard.
This reminded me of a few things and I felt it was good to bring back into the front of my mind, particularly for those student's who have taken a while to get cracking.

"Children’s oral language provides a foundation for their reading and writing at school. Their oral language knowledge, skills, and attitudes will continue to be extended by the oral language practices of the classroom as well as by the children’s developing expertise in reading and writing.

The oral language foundation that supports children’s school reading and writing includes:

• curiosity about oral language and a willingness to experiment with it, for example, by playing with rhyme and alliteration
• a wide oral vocabulary of nouns and verbs and also many adjectives and prepositions
• a willingness, and the confidence, to talk about things happening now, in the past, and in the future
• the ability to retell an experience, an event, or a known text
• an awareness of rhyme and of words that start with the same sound, along with the ability to hear and distinguish some other phonemes in spoken words."

Many of our kids do not start with much of the above at all. After almost 1 year at school our lowest student is just beginning to be able to retell a small part of an experience, hear and distinguish some phonemes etc. This highlighted to me the importance of going back to basics and trying hard to fit in some more opportunities to develop oral language. I'm still not sure where to fit that into our day!


In regards to writing, our same low students certainly did not come to school with the skills that are assumed by many of the ministry documents.

"When they start school, children enjoy “writing” for a variety of purposes and they can “read” their story or text to another person. They may “write” by making purposeful marks that are not recognisable as letters or words. When children “read” their own “written” stories, they demonstrate that they know what writing is and that they can hold an idea in their head long enough to retell the story.

Many children will also have mastered specific skills that support writing, for example:

• they write their own name using the correct letters in the correct order
• they form some other letters correctly
• they can securely hold a pencil, crayon, or other writing and drawing tool."

They are only now beginning to write their own name correctly, form some other letters correctly, "read" their own stories. Some of these students have been at school for almost 12months.  This provides a huge challenge for us as teachers. The children who do come to school with these skills jump straight into learning to read and write successfully. Leaving those that don't behind. We now have a huge gap in our class of students who are progressing well with a good understanding of written language to those who are only just gaining the understandings that the others started school with. These "poor" readers and writers are constantly being overtaken by other new students who have come with these good understandings.

Of course once they are at school it's up to us as teachers to do everything we can to support them. 

"Students begin reading and writing from their first day at school. Effective teachers build on the literacy knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students bring to their school learning.

Much of the school day revolves around literacy. In addition to shared and guided reading and writing, teachers support their students’ literacy learning with a rich mix of approaches, including language experience and frequent reading to students. They provide many opportunities for students to read and write independently and to engage in purposeful literacy tasks."

This is very much in the philosophy of my teaching practise. Students are included in reading and writing groups from their first day at school. Any attempt and success is celebrated. We spend a large part of our day focused specifically on literacy and literacy is integrated through most other parts of the day as well. 

All quotes are from the Literacy Learning Progressions on TKI 

Reading Progressions Magenta - Blue

Below are some illustrations straight from the Literacy Learning Progressions about in The First Year. I found them very helpful in confirming what we are doing in our room. We are aiming for students to be reading at yellow after 6months at school. We move students off magenta as soon as they have 1 to 1 pointing. They illustrations give a simple a short explanation of expected behaviours at skills for each level which is helpful to keep in the forefront of our practise.

"Although students progress at different rates, they all need to be at or near Yellow level after six months of instruction in order to reach the goal of reading at Green level by the end of the first year of school. The intention is that students will spend just long enough at each reading level for teachers to observe and confirm that appropriate processing behaviours are in place. Students have many opportunities for independent reading to strengthen their reading processing systems.

From Look at Me by Miriam Macdonald, Ready to Read (Magenta)

As soon as students start school, they begin reading texts at Magenta level. At this level, they need to:

• develop early concepts about print, such as the ideas that the print carries the message and that print is read from left to right¹
• expect a text to make sense and sound right
• gain control over one-to-one word matching.

From Lāvalava by Lino Nelisi, Ready to Read (Red)

At Red level, students are learning how to process print. They make meaning of text by applying their increasing ability to attend to the print detail and their growing knowledge of sentence structures and also by using their expanding reading vocabulary and the illustrations. They need to:

• know that words are made up of sounds and that letters represent sounds
• attend to initial letters and common infl ections (for example, -s, -ed, -ing) as they read
• understand the function of some simple punctuation
• read groups of words together in phrases
• gain control over using a return sweep with multiple lines of text
• notice some errors in their reading and take action to self-correct.

Students at this level have a sense of excitement about their reading and are keen to share the connections between the texts they read and their own experiences.

From Purr-fect! by Dot Meharry, Ready to Read (Yellow)

At Yellow level, students are developing their ability to search for and use interrelated sources of information (semantic, syntactic, and visual and graphophonic).²They use a wider range of word-solving strategies and comprehension strategies to make or confirm meaning. They need to be able to:

• decode simple, regular words by using their knowledge of grapheme–phoneme relationships and by making analogies to known rimes
• use sentence structure and context to supplement information gained from partial decoding attempts
• understand the function of some language and punctuation features (for example, the use of pronouns and speech marks to help track dialogue between characters)
• use comprehension strategies such as forming hypotheses and making simple inferences.

Students at Yellow level enjoy discussing the texts they read and offering opinions about them. Their reading is fluent and well-phrased, and they usually read without finger pointing.

From The Hissing Bush by Trish Puharich, Ready to Read (Blue)

At Blue level, students apply their reading processing strategies to longer and more varied texts. They need to:

• monitor their reading, searching for and using multiple sources of information in order to confirm or self-correct
• recognise many high-frequency words automatically
• engage more deeply with texts (for example, by using comprehension strategies to generate their own questions or to evaluate the effectiveness of a text).

Students at this level are curious about language. They enjoy discovering new things and talking about their discoveries (for example, noticing that they can work out a compound word by recognising the components). They read some sections of text silently."

http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions/The-first-year?q=node/11

Teacher - Staff Feedback

Here are the notes that Tara and I spoke to about how we are working in our class...

Tara & Emma feedback

Maths:

• Maths always used to be the thing that got missed if the day got busy. So we do it first thing everyday so that it doesn’t get missed.

• The first standard for maths is pretty easy to reach as the children only have to be able to count really.
• We try to include our “strand” maths with our inquiry topics where possible or with our reliever on our Reading Recovery release days so as not to disrupt the “number” lessons.
• A lot of focus on number knowledge. Try to create a really strong base of understanding to build from.  
• Small ability based groups. Each group seen every day. Follow up worksheet straight after teacher session so it can be explained well.
• Numeracy profiles provide more info for grouping/next steps than the GLOSS. We individually “test” at least once a term for the profiles. (Emma)

Reading:

• Our Reading Recovery training is really benefiting our students.

• Very flexible groups. Often have kids reading in two groups when they are between groups. Monthly running records on all kids help us to be clear about where they need to be working.
• Really happy with the progress in most of our children. Children who were at risk of being targets 6 months ago have really taken off now - Te Anga, Kaea and Sarah in particular. They are still below but only just. Te Anga reading level 9 and is only just 6 now. Kaea level 8. Sarah isn’t 6 til the end of Sept and is also reading level 9 so should be very close to standard by her birthday. Rewarding home reading and communication with home has helped with this. Both Te Anga and Sarah have taken extra work home.
• Short sharp reading lessons. 10 minutes per group max. Focus is on reading the book and looking at tricky words as they come up. Pre-read talk is important for helping with meaning.
• HF work with spelling cards and daily worksheets. Last term we had daily blend worksheets.

Writing:

• Week long piece of writing. Motivation/brainstorm/picture plan etc on monday.
• Add a sentence or 2 each day. Helps to build an interesting story/message while doing it in lengths they can manage. Re-reading everyday.
• Small groups so they can be supported by teacher to learn about spacing, letter sounds, full stops and capitals. More advanced groups are sent off to complete some work independently.

Need help with:

Hunter

• He is low in literacy areas, reading L3 (hard), writing 1i. Behaviour has a lot to do with this, a lot of defiance - no patterns (day, teacher, time, subject, group). Other behaviour has decreased and his sticker chart is becoming harder (needs to get 10 stickers not 5) and he is fine with that.

Sarah

• Works well independently (running records) and at home but struggles with all group tasks. Lack of focus. How can we help her to keep up with her group and focused?

Suggestions:

Teacher Aide use:

• Works with lower of top group to support independent writing. Allows Teacher to work with lower writers without interruption.
• If she finishes with those students then she plays alphabet and spelling activities with low literacy learners to help develop this knowledge when they are not working with the teacher.