First up, we have the Google Suite at our school and creating Google docs using Voice to Text extension is a great tool for students who find the task of writing laborious to the point where they are reluctant to put pen to paper. Students who have challenges with dyslexia and dysgraphia can find this a useful way to let their stories see the light of day! Text to Speech is also useful for these students to check that their writing makes sense and to think about where punctuation may need to be added.
School Kit - Get New Zealand Writing
This is a great resource to be completed in the first term of the year. School Kit develops great kits, free to NZ teachers but often there are limited numbers. My class is currently working on creating poems to share with a buddy class guided by materials in a kit and lesson plans using the headings 'find', 'apply' and 'produce'. We created a shared colour poem and are finding 'sticky words' that will be used in the creation of poems on 'postcards'. Even without the actual kit, there are some fabulous ideas you can use in the free downloadable resource linked above. There are facebook groups where teachers are sharing what is being created to further inspire you and your students with this project.
The Game of Awesome
This is part of a 'success for boys' initiative and card packs can be accessed through 'Down the Back of the Chair' or downloaded and printed/ laminated. Some of the cards involve things like nose picking and toilet talk so are very appealing to students in general as well as the target users: boys. I recommend going into the Teacher Support Material for this game as it provides alternative ways to play as well as 'planning templates' you can use to scaffold the cards into plans for writing. You can take this further and create your own sets of cards (there are blank ones available) relating to a topic you are exploring with your students e.g. Seaweek or Fairytales.
The Literacy Shed
This is amazing for inspiring ideas in writing. Depending on the age group you teach and current events, you may need to be selective of the material that you choose to use to inspire your class. Along with videos and photos there are suggestions of ways you can use the resources for writing in your classes. Some even have teaching plans such as 'The Little Shoemaker' however to access the actual plans you will need to be a member of 'The Literacy Shed +' with paid access.
The Writing Book
This book is part of a collection including others on Oral Language, Reading Comprehension and Publishing and Display. It is one of my 'go to' resources for looking at the process of learning in writing as well as mini lessons and planning templates to guide students such as burger plans for learning how to construct paragraphs. There are some free resources you can access via the link above to give you a 'taster' on what is on offer.
Mentor Sentences
I somehow stumbled across this idea early in 2017 when I came across this post while trying to find ways to support a small group of students in their understanding what a sentence actually was and how to correctly use simple punctuation. A weeks free lessons was the clincher to give this a go and using the text: I wanna Iguana, I trialed it. Students didn't know much about verbs and nouns, but they got adjectives reasonably quickly. This strategy also provided a way to work on handwriting (when they copied the sentence), to see themselves as editors - changing words to make the meaning clearer or the create a better picture in the readers mind and then even using the sentence structure in a different context. Students were creative and fun in the way they used the sentence structure and most were enthusiastic to share their created sentences with the class.
While attending the Otago Literacy Symposium in 2017, Gail Loane was the key note speaker. I have been inspired by her book 'I've Got Something To Say' many times over as it shares a love of writing and the written word. In a workshop with Gail, she used a section from Piano Rock by Gavin Bishop, the language was delightful and her work with us using this text as a springboard was fabulous. Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson was recommended as a further way to build grammar its use and style into teaching writing in our classes/ workshops. This serves to help me understand the structure of our written language so I can better teach students. I downloaded this to my iPad via Amazon/ Kindle. I love this sentence from his book: "Grammar and mechanics are not rules to be mastered as much as tools to serve a writer in creating a text readers will understand."
Book Creator
While I have admired 'Book Creator' and played around with it, I haven't really used it effectively and this is something I want to change this year. This is available as an app for iPads and also as a free app on Chrome . As teachers, we can set up a class and students use a code to join the class. There are some options as to what students can do with the texts e.g. publish to what audience, for teachers to consider. Creating and sharing a digital book gives real purpose to writing and this is moving writing into the kind of realm that much of our reading happens in currently. Another great feature of 'Book Creator' is that it can be used in conjunction with 'Seesaw' to share with our parents and whanau.
Seesaw
While Seesaw has some tools to support writing development in students (through the activities you can use or create), its power, I believe, lies in the way it can document the process and growth of learning in all areas including writing. Seesaw is a cross platform Learning Journal. We are using this with our Year 1 - 4 students currently but there is no reason why older students couldn't also utilise this. Students can photograph their writing books, connect google docs or slides they have been constructing, add in 'book creator' creations and even add movies that are used to 'tell stories' or document what they have discovered. Students can share these (depending on the settings selected by the teacher in conjunction with the learning community) with parents and maybe also their classmates, inviting them to add feedback and feedforward through comments - text or voice and even video comments. Seesaw has both free and paid options.
What tools have you used and found useful in your class?
