Real Learning?

I am really enjoying the experience of trying out Daily Five in my classroom.  This system of structuring and managing my Literacy programme, along with the CAFE menu of reading strategies,  is a way of teaching that is really resonating with me. I feel so energised still at the end of the day, I look forward to the ideas I am going to share and teach my class each day.  Some of these things are new to me, I have just learned them and I delight in bringing them along to class.

Today I stopped by DR. He was working on a narrative piece of writing in his Writer's Notebook.  I asked him about the last piece of narrative writing he had been working on when I met him last.  He looked at me and said, "It didn't work out, I got muddled in the middle." I asked him what he had learned from the experience. He replied, " I realised I really need to plan my writing. So I am taking the time to plan this narrative in more depth, at the moment I am developing my characters so that I have some details on the kind of people they are."

Have your ever felt vindicated! (We are working at using words we come across in our reading, vindicated is one of those!) In that moment I did.  Early in the year I had taken the class through a number of ways to plan their writing.  In term two I was out of the classroom, on returning this term, as I circled the room I began to realise that as I asked about planning, many students owned that they hadn't planned.  I felt quite downhearted. However I calmly mentioned and reminded again of the importance of planning.

Now, through first hand experience DR has discovered and experienced how important planning is in helping to structure a piece of writing.  If I had continued to teach and support and gone back to Term one mode, DR would never have learned this for himself.  There's a time to teach, and there's a time to give students the freedom to find out for themselves.

It was a great day!