Writing - the beautiful jigsaw of trying to get it right!

 So if you have been following my journey, you will know that I have been developing my understandings of structured literacy over the last five years.  You will also know I am a massive advocate for play and developmentally appropriate teaching, not only that you will know that my journey into structured literacy has also taken me into developing a scope and sequence for maths.

If you have been reading for awhile, you will also know I am a big believer in storytelling and that this is my favourite quote.

Depending on how long you have been following me you may also know that this all started with play and a need to address oral language, from there everything has spiralled.  

You will know that these goals are massive for me and that being developmentally aware is something I am very very passionate about.  I believe we need to be ready for children, that we meet them where they are at and that we must as educators understand the brain.

Last year I was in a new entrants - year 2 class (mostly NE/Y1).  I experimented with writing, finding what my programme needed to look like in order to build strong foundations.  For this level, along with the mechanics of writing, which I will mention soon, storytelling takes the fore.  The building of oral language, of vocabulary, of the ability to tell a story, to wonder in using our imagination is absolutely crucial for our earliest learners, the writing of a story isn't what it is about in that first year.  

I did become really aware last year however about all the different skills that need to come together in order for children to have enough automaticity in the mechanics of writing that they are then allowed the freedom from cognitive load to really be 'story writers'

What I do know, and have known for a very long time, is that many children are put off writing forever and become 'struggling' or 'reluctant' writers because too much has been expected too soon and not enough explicit, scaffolded teaching has gone on.  For many this also happens when they are expected to write, when they lack the hand strength, realise this process hurts, and then in turn end up hating writing.

Something I have also become very aware of over the last few years is cognitive load and how this plays a role in the success or lack of for our learners.

This year I have stepped into a year 1-3 class.  I have a real opportunity to break my 'writing' programme down into its parts and truly begin to analyse what is absolutely necessary and how it all fits together.  

If you have not already, have a read of this article, great to have the research backing it up.

As a staff we have also been working on the development of writing...I very much believe the first three to four years are about building strong foundations.  This is a big body of work, one that we will continue to reflect and build on.  It allows us all to understand what a child's pathway may (or may not) look like through school, but also honours that all children progress at different rates and that is ok.

So to the core parts for my writing programme this year, this very basic jigsaw gives a bit of a starting point idea.

Firstly, what I have discovered over the last several years is that the business of learning to read, spell and write is much more complex than I ever gave it credit for.  For a few children literacy comes naturally, or appears to.  But for most explicit teaching is required.  Funnily enough, both my children took to literacy naturally and loved reading and writing...however they would have benefited from explicit teaching because now as adults, spelling is a weakness for both of them.  I also think of myself, if I had been taught the spelling rules, it would have made a massive difference to me at university, spelling was always easy for me, but when up against a word I have not seen before or do not have context for, I lack the understanding of the very rules that would have helped me.    

It is not just about the children and their needs though.  As teachers we have to deeply understand what it is we are teaching, when we need to teach it and why.  I think we feel that we know how all this works, but the deeper I dig, the more I realise I just didn't know.  The learning I have been doing in other areas lately around the brain is very literally blowing my mind!

So what does my writing approach look like at the moment, based on what I have learned so far?

Well, firstly, it no longer happens in a block called writing, but does happen over the day and week in small bite sized amounts.  Basically pulling apart what it takes to be a writer and teaching explicitly those parts, avoiding cognitive load and making sessions short.  (Remembering for me this happens in a room where play is our main way of working, this to me, is still the most important thing.)

Children in the year before they come to me have experienced a rich environment based on play, storytelling, drawing and talk.   They have also had great opportunities to develop fine and gross motor skills, and this really shows!

In my class I can then break writing down further....over the week, we have short, bite sized sessions, these are not timetabled, but are planned for and happen where they naturally fit into our day.

As you may be aware, the goals that we work with children on are individualised, this means that for some they may be slightly ahead of where we are working as a class...that is ok, because a lot of learning comes from teaching.

1) Formation - we use Casey the Caterpillar.  The story is playful and making the shapes is accessible for all children.  I watch pencil grip during this time, taking into account that for some children, their hand strength (and all the many components that go into pencil grip) may not be there yet.  What I did discover this year is that children need to use shorter pencils...so that adjustment can be made easily.  Children are also developing fine motor during play as well, so it is just up to me to watch and notice if there is something that needs to be adjusted for that child as and when they are ready for it.  Casey also assists them with directionality and the concept of never being able to go back to her egg is one they really cotton onto to.  Once we have worked our way through this, we will move to more formally writing the letters themselves...or spelling the sounds as I like to call it.  

Casey is also a really good one to share with parents, it is an easy way that they can help.

2)Phonetic awareness - through our structured literacy sessions we work through the scope and sequence, we use LLLL and the code.    We also have a seperate phonological focus at the beginning of this session.  Throughout the day, when we have moments, I will put a challenge word up on the board and children will have a go at decoding it.  We can then talk about the sounds within the word etc and link it back to what we have been learning.  

3)Word chain, children love this activity, we do it as a whole class and will also share with home so they can use this if they want.  We do word chain once a week at least.  Children really love this, I keep it well within all of their abilities, so everyone is happy to have a go.

4)Dictated sentences...based on the stages we are working on we will use a dictated text.  This is a good opportunity to focus on spacing, directionality and full stops.  We do this as a whole class once a week and we do this as part of our activities in reading groups. 

5)Heart word learning.  Children will be working on these individually, but we teach them in class using the approach of taking sound to print and exploring the irregular parts.  To assist our collaborative writing, we will occasionally work on heart words that are a bit out of sequence, so that children can access them when they write.  For me this heart word learning is so important, when children 'guess' at words like heart words, that are used so frequently, they often form spelling patterns that they then believe to be correct, it is so hard to undo this.  We learn heart words once or twice a week as a class, or as relevant to our collaborative writing.

6) Collaborative writing - once a week we will come up with a short story together.  This is quite heavily guided by me, because I know what heart words they do or don't know.  The collaborative writing is usually based around our storytelling, but not always.  We will say the story out loud together.  count the words (it is usually just the first sentence we write together.). Children will have a go on whiteboards, scaffolded and supported by me.  We will discuss the features we have learned, like spacing, capital letters, full stops and may learn something new if it fits.  I like to use a Nessy video from youtube if relevant because children love these.  Once we have written the sentence together, children grab their books and go and write independently.  Many will write the same sentence, others will do this, but add extra, while others will write their own story.   

7)Storytelling - we have Edward our storytelling puppet, he is loved by the children and visits to tell weird and wonderful stories, full of imagination and great vocabulary.  Children will often draw their own pictures in response to this and tell their own stories, I have blogged about this storytelling before and it really is just a time where children are free to be the masters of their own stories.  A great balance against the explicit strategies being used.  We use storytelling throughout the week as often as we can!

8)Digging deeper into storytelling.  This year I am learning about talk for writing.  We did one last term based on the Itchy Witch and it was fantastic.  When we are in the midst of this, we will be having short sessions each day.   If you want to find out more, here is the website.  https://www.talk4writing.com/

I have not yet had professional development on this, but there are loads of resources out there to support you.

Play

Loads of writing happens in play.  Children frequently make cards, signs, their own stories, label pictures etc etc.  Writing happens in authentic contexts and it is fabulous!

Assessment:

I hate that word, but for want of a better title, have used it.  We do still do a writing sample each term and I use this to work out collective and individual need.  We also have our individual sheets based on each stage that are a great dynamic tool to use with children.  I do like to use Heidi Songs writing progression sheet to as it informs us a lot developmentally.

So in essence the heart of what I do in terms of storytelling has not changed.  But alongside this I am now laying the foundations explicitly for children to have automaticity over the skills they need to be able to free up their mind to write.  

I am really enthusiastic to see how this all pans out this year as we are already seeing superb progress.  I am also noticing children are really loving writing much more than they did and it is appearing more in their play.

A term of structured literacy...

 There is such a debate at the moment (not sure if it ever stopped.) Structured literacy vs balanced literacy.  Sometimes however it feels that many argue without even knowing what they are arguing about.  In fact it is becoming increasingly obvious to me, that those that argue against structured literacy have very little understanding of the Science of reading and basically think it is just about phonics.

The argument is, children can't just be taught to sound out words...that is not an effective strategy, children need to experience language to be exposed to great vocab, to be surrounded by literature, to love reading...what is funny is this, structured literacy does all of these things and more!

The other argument is often from those who have children that naturally took to reading (I had two of those myself) they don't see the need in all children learning this way and believe it to be boring.  Well I can say hand on heart, that even my more duck to water readers LOVE this.  They love learning heart words, they find it playful, they have success and my own two duck to water readers could have done with structured literacy, because let's just put it this way, spelling isn't their strength.  What it isn't is boring.  It is not drill and kill...children experience success and really enjoy the process.  Who doesn't love feeling successful?

That's the other thing people don't realise actually, this isn't just about reading, it is as much about spelling as it is about reading....show me a very able reader and very often they will be a weak speller...they need this too.

But I digress, the point of this post is to show you structured literacy in photos....to show you what a term has encompassed and to help you see this is not phonics.  This is a structured, systematic way of explicitly building successful well rounded readers and writers, who are excellent communicators and can use what they have learned to help them in their day to day existence.  No more 'reluctant' writers because they have been forced into writing before they had the hand strength to do so, or the understanding.  No more children who believe that reading is not their thing.  No more undoing poor spelling habits because children have just been allowed to free write without any direction.

I will just ensure I do acknowledge that structured literacy occurs at our place through a developmentally informed lens and within a play based environment.  

So what has this term looked like?

Well for a start it is all about the individual...our goals can be found here....Individual Goals

The important thing to note here, is these are individual...the little assessments or observations along the way inform us.  This means if a child is struggling with fine motor, it would not be appropriate for us to expect them to hold a pencil for longer than they actually want to.  If that child is struggling with gross motor etc it may be more appropriate for them to stand and practice drawing on a window.  The steps in allow us to make modifications and scaffold children individually, within our whole class sessions.  If a child has just started exploring and developing phonological awareness it is more appropriate for them to story tell out loud from a picture.  Equally if a child is developmentally advanced and comes with a lot of understandings already, we can engage with them where they are at.  

We can adjust what we do, based on individual need.  

This is not holding children back, it is scaffolding them and supporting them right where they are, and giving them what they need next to assist their development, wherever that may be.

I should probably also say, along with being developmentally responsive, we are also applying a trauma informed lens, we understand how learning works, how the stress response impacts this, how a child's age developmentally may be different to their chronological age (this applies to all ages) how regulated we need to be, along with the child in order for learning to stick.

The individual goals are very important to us, they travel through the first three or four years at our place and allow us to see and cherish progress.  They are something that have morphed and changed over the years and a result of the work and research we have engaged in over the years.

A great starting place for anyone wanting to know what structured literacy actually encompasses, is  Scarboroughs rope, start by understanding it is not just phonics and move on from there to learn more.

Images of structured literacy in my class - Term 1 (Year 1-3 class)

Storytelling with our friend Edward, fun for exploring language and the structure of stories.  The children love him!

Heart word learning, sound to print.  Say the word, identify the sounds, talk about the irregular parts, spell it down, practice and say the letters out loud in order, put it in a sentence.  Done both whole class and then individually or in a group dependent on stage.  Children do not learn words visually, for heart words we still have to map the sounds.  Heart words are words with irregular spellings (may be that we have not yet learned that pattern) not sight words that children have mapped and stored away because they have seen them often.  Learning to spell them (encode) greatly helps the reading (decoding)

We work together to write dictated sentences from the story.

We use counters or other things we can manipulate to explore the alphabetic code

 and assist children to consolidate the sounds they need for that stage.  For many, building the word and pulling out the sounds they need, really assists progress.

Each child has a home/school book.  In here we practice speed words, heart words, things we need to practice that they can also work on at home.

We do this as a whole class, and children LOVE it!

  The ability to tune into the word and the part that needs to be changed is a real skill that assists their spelling greatly.

A new addition over the last two years has been the Magic Caterpillar,  we finished learning the shapes last week and now are using these to revisit the sounds and spell them with correct formation...I am noticing a big difference!  

Talk For Writing - Storytelling

This term I have been playing around with this, deepening my approach to story telling and it has been awesome.  Drawing from the story, learning the story off by heart, retelling the story, planning out parts of the story, performing the story out loud for the class and other classes and then writing our own witch stories.  Lots and lots of vocab development, exploration of new words, heaps of scaffolding, and just pure joy.  I was surprised that children loved working with the same story all term, they just ate it up!  Fits brilliantly with mantle of the expert and is something I will continue refining.

Collaborative writing, that children then went and worked on independently.

The start of our planning.

Love using decodable books, the scope and sequence was something that was new learning for me several years ago.

This term we have read Amelia Jane and now then the class voted on this one, so far they are loving it!!!

Of course we also read a wide range of awesome picture books!

Regular practice.  We do have explicit writing sessions that sit alongside our storytelling sessions.  Two different approaches with the same ultimate goal.  In our explicit sessions we look at how sentences are formed, we explore spacing, directionality, punctuation, heart words we may need, how to generate an idea.  We work together and then children move off to write on their own.  I am already noticing the mix of storytelling and the explicit approach is coming together to mean that as children gain fluency, they start to readily add detail to their own writing.

Exploring the speed words first in a story is assisting fluency when reading.  Also a great opportunity to explore now vocab and the meaning of words.

When we work on heart words, we use blocks or counters, or dots to symbolise the sounds in the word and talk about the irregular parts.

Using the counters to build the words from the story helps as a scaffold for those that need it.  Others may be writing dictated sentences that go with the story.

For children that struggle with the size of their writing, but are able to make it smaller, I find drawing a shape to keep the writing inside, helps.

love the visual nature of these cards.

We use these as a class and link them in with our handwriting and phonetic sessions when working within the stages. 

Love these decodable books!

This might not seem to link in, but we use discussions a lot and this helps not only to develop oral language tunes children into noticing and questioning, developing this ability is a wonderful asset to all areas of learning.

This works in our play-based class, it works for us when applied with a developmentally informed lens, it works for all and is absolutely essential for many.  

This does however come down to teacher understanding, because while children respond to different approaches,  we need to deeply understand what it is we are doing, how learning works to be able to provide experiences that will work for the specific need a child has.  

I feel like a detective some days, but wow is it rewarding when you can find the specific need and work on an approach that will help!  

What I am loving so far about the scope and sequence

 As you will know, if you have been following my journey (or have read my last post) this year I faced a real challenge.  The children walking in the door lacked number sense, had a very limited understanding of the role of numbers.  They could write numerals, but had no idea of their meaning.  Numerosity was a real issue.  

I do wonder if my work in structured literacy has helped me to see better when children have struggles.  

On top of this, developmentally across the board children were not quite ready for the world of Number Agents.  So for the first year in what seems forever, I could not teach maths how I would have always done.

My journey into structured literacy had shown me the value of a scope and sequence, so I took it upon myself to research and find one that would work for these children specifically for maths.

I busily read the NCETM early years math curriculum (which were the basis for many of the big ideas and the teacher speak indicators) The old BSM documents, The current NZ Maths information and Jo Boaler's junior curriculum books.   One of my main inspirations was Woodin maths, the concept of the woodin patterns really appealed to me and the founder Chris Woodin and his boundless knowledge of working with children who are challenged with dyscalculia tapped into what I wanted for a structured approach to maths.  There is a gaping hole in math curriculums when it comes to really providing for children in this way, just as there as been for children with dyslexia.  

What I wanted to do most importantly was to create a resource that used a variety of materials, because let's face it, not all resources work for everyone.  I was taught in a time of Cuisenaire rods, hundreds blocks and thousands blocks, they did nothing to help me and math continued to be an area that I struggled in throughout my school life (and still do.). However I do have to say, my work into patterns and deeply understanding number has helped my own mathematics greatly.

I think we all need to understand that there is no one stop approach to anything we teach. When it comes to mathematics the best approach allows children to see math in a variety of ways so that they establish strong foundations to go on from.  I also wanted to weave all of the visual strategies that I know work and encourage math talk as I also know that is an absolute key.  Woven through the sequence are these visual activities and each session is also tied to a number block episode because these guys are amazing!

As children move through the scope and sequence problem solving is introduced, but the very cool thing is that once this is introduced, children have the patterns to hang their hat on as a strategy.

The scope and sequence is written with this in mind...the woodin patterns form the basis of the first sessions, but after that numicon and other resources can be used to supplement and add to these.  

Anyway, back to the point of the post...why am I loving this scope and sequence so far?

I guess the main reason would be that it is working.  When we started out, we had children I had real concerns about, when asked to get three, they would grab a handful, they had no idea what the whole would look like.  It took weeks and weeks, but now those children are really showing an understanding of what a whole looks like up to ten, they make a better estimation when gathering an amount and have a good knowledge of the Woodin patterns to fall back on.  They have a concrete way of showing us an amount that they know works.  From here they have been able to look at parts and understand that a whole can be broken into parts.  When using dot talks, they are starting to use this understanding of parts to establish how many in the whole.

Children are showing flexibility and confidence with number.  Those that struggled are starting to see friends to ten, starting to really understanding teen.  I am noticing a greater ability to compensate, understanding that 8 and 6 is the same as 7 and 7.  They are also becoming very adept problem solvers for their age and stage and when drawing problems visually, are starting to understand that when representing a group, drawing say eight dots in a line is hard to count, but drawing four and four makes it easy for the brain to see.

Those children I had concerns about?  Well they are flourishing under this approach.  The patterns have given them to confidence with number that they needed.  They have a sense of number that they did not have before and they LOVE maths.  Now when children have a parts of a whole activity, they approach it with real confidence.  As an example, the whole in our last session was 12.  They could see 4, but the rest were hidden under two boxes.  This would have been hard before, but this time they approached it with great gusto...collecting 12, working out the missing part and then finding ways this part could be split between the two shapes.  Everyone did this and the pride on their faces was amazing to see.

Math language has increased, they are able to express themselves more clearly and with understanding.  The scope and sequence goes at a lovely slow pace, it revisits concepts in a range of ways and this has allowed confidence to grow.  Using the modelling book to summarise key points within our sessions also allows us to revisit and discuss.

The sessions are easily broken up into manageable part and sometimes a session takes us a couple of weeks and that is ok.  In fact, the more deliberately we approach this, the better it is.

I was lucky to pick up where I left off with my class from last year.  We were already a quarter of the way into the scope and sequence at the end of the year.  Remarkably, none of that learning was lost and the children displayed confidence with the patterns right from the beginning.

This year the new entrant class has started with the scope and sequence, they are already noticing the confidence growing and the success children are having.  For them it is also easy, the thinking is done, so the teaching and learning is at the fore.  Energy can be put into quality teaching, learning and reflecting.

For my class, we are just finishing session 44 of 60.  Coming into the business end of the scope and sequence.  However I don't think we will have time to create a full blown agency as I had wanted to, In fact I think we will only be finishing this all in Term 3....what I had not accounted for is that this scope and sequence if taught well, possibly takes a year.  So to ensure I can bring the drama into my problem solving, we will start a mini agency, with a multi-purpose villain.  I look forward to that!

I love Number Agency, but I think that this scope and sequence has to be the thing I am most proud of!  At the end of this year, I will go through and edit/add to it based on my findings from teaching the full thing.

If you want to know more, you can join my Number Agent facebook group, linked from my page.  In this group I share snapshots of our learning each week.

My store is located here on teachers pay teachers, you can find the scope and sequence here.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Number-Agents