Colloquial Imperatives

Want to help your children find, identify and remember where imperative verbs are used in instructional writing? 

Try making the imperatives a little less formal!

We've chucked :-) a couple of examples in our Dropbox folder here.

Dialogue and Breaking the Fourth Wall

If you're looking for a way to teach punctuating dialogue, it's hard to beat Lee's "Teaching Direct Speech Punctuation using the iPhone text messaging!", which he published nearly five (FIVE) years ago.

Recently, I've been reading books in the following series to both my own children and my class. As someone reading a book out loud, the thing I like it is the way the books talk to their audience and invite them into the narrative.

The reason they're appearing in this post is that they're written as direct speech, with the speech in speech bubbles.

Ideas:

- children look at page or pages in a book and convert the speech bubble(s) into written, punctuated dialogue.

- children create a dialogue between themselves and the book. The books get the reader to think or intimate a response. These could be written down.

- children could write the narrative of the story. Still writing dialogue, but adding actions and descriptions too.

Just a few ideas to get you started...

Lightning Writing

Just like anything else, one of the key elements of becoming a better writer is actually doing it. One of the strategies we have used to increase the frequency of our writing is something we have called 'Lightning Writing'. This takes place most mornings during registration and involves writing for a short amount of time (often only 15 minutes). In general, the writing tasks fall into the following areas:

• three sentence stories - write a story in three sentences. Horror works well, but it can also be a good opportunity for teaching rhetorical questions as a story ending.
• improving supplied sentences - give them basic sentences and get pupils to improve them.
• sentence combining - a variation on the above. However, with a focus on joining simple sentences together.
• teaching sentence types in a context - we use Alan Peat 'Exciting Sentences'. This is a great opportunity to teach some of the different styles.
• descriptive passages - writing a description based on a stimulus such as those provided by the brilliant 'Pobble' website. Although we have used our own such as this one.
    
  There are, of course,  lots of other options. We wrote tweets, emails to the prime minister and even letters of complaint. 

Once the idea is set up, the task is displayed on the board and children were able to get on with having a go independently. 
This activity does require a bit of extra marking, but, by adding in a peer-assessment day, editing day and feedback day, one task can become an extremely constructive piece of writing over a whole week. Often these tasks are so good they can be published (including sending them to the people they are writing to). Another advantage is that they come so frequently you can get them to write what interests you and the children as well as those pieces on the curriculum. A favourite of ours was the writing of haiku, which ended up in our best work books at the end of the year.

Word Class (Parts of Speech) Paper Chains

After our recent lesson using emojis to cover word classes, we were thinking about something a little more festive.*

We wrote five sentences, printed them on strips of paper, cut them up and asked children to recreate the sentences as paper chains. Each word class was printed on a different colour so that the children could identify the classes before and after making the sentences**. With the sentences we made, the capitalised words at the start of the sentences, commas and full stops were included on the strips of paper to get the children to think about how that impacted on where in the sentence the word would be placed. Our sentences can be found here.

**The word 'flies' is included as a 'subject'. With some children, an interesting discussion was held about why this word was not included as a 'verb'.

As it turned out, not all children made the original sentences that we had. Not all worked perfectly, as some had not considered tense and plural/singular before constructing the sentence. However, again a good discussion point. 

*Paper chains are not just for Christmas.

More Dice for Writing Exciting Sentences.

We are now trying the next step in our use of dice to support children in their use of Alan Peat 'Exciting Sentences'.

With the Year Six class we work with, we are giving the children, who have all been taught different sentence types over the last three years, a blank cube net as might be found here. The children, who are writing mystery narratives, are going to choose the most relevant and useful sentence types for their piece of writing, The challenge will be to take two dice and merge the two different sentence types into one wonderful sentence of complexity and detail (instead of appsmashing; sentencesmashing).

Whilst we love the way 'exciting sentences' serves as a toolbox for equipping children with different ways of adding sentence structures and punctuation, the ultimate aim is for children to develop a proper understanding of how those sentence structures and different pieces of punctuation work. Then we want them to effectively and appropriately 'break the rules' in order to make their writing more effective.

The purpose of this intermediate stage is to get the children to take a proactive role in choosing which sentence types work best for the text type they are writing and, more importantly, how they go beyond their basic use in making them more effective. For those writers who are confident, we now want to teach them to take risks with their writing and start deliberately breaking rules, from a basis of knowledge, in order to engage the reader.

The children found that some sentences worked more effectively than others. For example an 'if, if, if, then' sentence worked well with 'simile' sentences. It made them think even harder about the effect the words were having on the reader especially when the sentences went wrong. It also demonstrated those children who were learning the sentence types parrot fashion and needed some grammar and punctuation intervention as well as those who had a deeper understanding.

To get started with the 'exciting sentence' types, buy the book here.

Non-Handwriting, Handwriting Ideas

In our classes, we regularly have children who find handwriting challenging and, now that they are in years five and six, have been through endless practice lessons, interventions and groups. Whilst we still find the traditional copying methodology has a place, we are always on the look out for more engaging ways of getting children to practise their fine motor control.

Firstly, we used origami with the children. We gave them some easier models to fold using some cheap, but lovely paper from Tiger. As our inspiration, we used some of the characters from the Origami Yoda series, which also provides simple instructions to follow in creating some of the characters from the novel. This activity allows the children to practise precision and small hand and finger movements.

Image credit: 'Caesar' (Edges traced in Inkscape using a self-taken photo.) GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

Next, we used some larger dot-to-dots books from this series of books (although some can also be found here). As they go from 1-1000, they are extremely complicated and need great control to complete. The children loved these and spent a significant amount of time trying to guess what the picture was.

On the Discovery  Education website we found some complicated mazes (impossible according to one pupil). Again these took a significant amount of control to finish successfully.

Most recently, we gave the children free rein to create a sculpture out of some older, and harder, modelling clay. The children loved the creativity of this task and, because of how tough it was, needed the children to strengthen their hand muscles in order to get the clay pliable,

Image Credit: Dan Bollinger (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

All of these activities have been delivered during registration time over several days with some resources being sent home as the children have been so engaged by them.

Finding Sentences Structures

Earlier this year, whilst on a school trip to the National Space Centre, a colleague and I were reading some information when she exclaimed, "Ah, nice embedded clause there". This then developed through the rest of the day with us trying to spot types of sentences we'd not seen so far that day. Some of the children even got involved. In fact, for one of them, it meant she read a whole lot more than she probably would have done otherwise! 

As a result, I decided to do more of finding sentence structures within texts to look at how and why they've been used...

1. Authorial Intent
During reading activities (guided, group, class, one-to-one and so on...), look for sentence structure variety. Discuss what sentence structures have been used and why the author has chosen to use them. Do they stick to a certain type? Do they have large variety? Does the child(ren) know and use those sentences?

2. Write Sentences Into a Story

When I read Alan Peat's 'A Second Book of Exciting Sentences', I found in it a story called 'The Minotaur’s Revenge’. This story contained in it examples of the sentences from both of Alan Peats' books about sentence types. My class read this story (enjoying it) and found many of the sentence types we'd been learning to use. As a result, I had a go at my own story (just using the sentences from 'Writing Exciting Sentences: Age 7 Plus') and that story can be found here (Also, answer key). Again, my class enjoyed reading the story (whilst agreeing I shouldn't give up the day job) and the challenge of finding the sentence types. I was very clear that this was a contrived exercise and I was not suggesting or expecting that their story writing should reflect this example of including a group of sentences in a text. In addition, I included a couple of sentences that showed how the rules taught when learning these sentences can be tweaked and adapted, which lead to a interesting discussion. A text example (fiction or non-fiction) could be written as an exemplar for something being studied and then include relevant sentence structures. 

3. Sentence Structure Booklets 
Each week, our children write down words that are new to them and find out their definitions. Following on from this, I created a booklet for children to use during reading time (at home and in school) to write down the sentence structures they come across as they read. A copy of this booklet can be found here. And, for those using Alan Peat's 'Writing Exciting Sentences: Age 7 Plus', this (select pages that are useful to your children, don't just print off the whole lot) and this may be of use.

4. Sentence of the Week 
Some easier than others but, if you have a Sentence of the Week: "Can anyone find an example of that in a book"

After children have found a number of sentences in published work, can they identify any particular sentence structures that fit a fiction and non-fiction and then genres? The main area of discussion, and the largest section in the booklets I gave the children to use, is authorial intent. Why is the sentence used? What's the impact?

Some of the ideas outline above have been done with Alan Peat's own advice about using his work and his blog post 'Exciting Sentences – a word of caution' in mind. The ideas and resources shared here do not contradict that advice in the way they were delivered.

'We Make Use of...' Alan Peat

Our next post in our 'We Make Use of...' series...

A number of colleagues have been lucky enough to attend training run by Alan Peat. Below are the books* I currently have at my disposal in my classroom. These books, the information brought back from the training and our adoption of a whole-school approach to English coverage has transformed my teaching of English and in turn the children's attainment an application (across the curriculum) of rules of written English.

In addition to those books, at the time of writing, I have the following apps* installed (indicated by 'Downloaded') on my iPad device:

Whole school - The first message that came back from the training was for us to use a whole school approach: share vocabulary, tools, displays, diagrams and so on. These were mostly from Alan's training, but in staff meetings, we also generated vocabulary and resources we wanted to us.

Punctuation - Alan's book was purchased for each class. As a result, every teacher had at their disposal a book that gave informative and useful information about each punctuations type and how children could be taught how to use them.

Sentence Types - As with the punctuation book, 'Writing Exciting Sentences: Age 7 Plus' was also purchased for each class. Again, teachers now had a method of helping children to improve the variety of sentence structures used in their writing. We looked at which sentences could be introduced in each year group and the accompanying app helped us know with which text types to use the sentences.

Language - Throughout the training, books and apps (as mentioned before), the main factor in helping children to improve their writing ability has been through shared and consistent vocabulary that children can hear again and again and become increasingly familiar with.

Apps / books at home - We've shared the apps and books with parents to allow them to reinforce this learning outside of the classroom. 

These are just our experiences and it's been very positive. There's much more Alan offers on his site and through his training. See alanpeat.com for more details.

*Some of these books / apps were purchased by the school we work at, others by us personally and some provided free of charge by Alan Peat Ltd. None of those were for the purpose or expectation of this blog post being written. This is, as always, the view and opinion of two full-time class teachers about something we use in the classroom. 

Literacy and Topic in Context - UKEd Magazine May 2015

In May 2015, Liam wrote an article for the UKEd Magazine. The article is about a method of teaching English that we have called 'LaTiC' (Literacy and Topic in Context).

Read the article (and the rest of the magazine) here.

UKEd Magazine are always on the look out for contributors. Contact the magazine here.

'We Make Use of...' Spellodrome

This is the first post of a series that we're goign to tag with 'We Make Use of...'

We've been making use of Spellodrome for about five years. Initially a little sceptical of how Mathletics (covering all of maths) could  have a similar site focusing on only spelling would work, we began to use it.

Image credit: www.3plearning.com

In the site, there are word lists set up that can be used. These link to curriculum expectations. There is also the ability to set up custom word lists. To learn the spellings there are a large variety of enjoyable games for the children to complete. These games include: putting parts of words back together, a similar game to hangman, writing word in sentences, word searches and more. The games enable the children to learn the words, their meaning and the sounds that make them up in a variety of contexts.

Both teachers, pupils and parents are able to track pupils' progress

Within Spellodrome, there are certificates that an be earned by children for their independent work. We hand these out in class and in assemblies within school. The children are engaged and motivated by them and, seeing them being handed out, also motivates others to use Spellodrome too.

We have used this to accompany weekly set spelling lists, as part of spelling lessons, to support prevention and intervention groups, for independent work and more.

That's just a small insight into what we've found Spellodrome useful for. If you want to know more, please get in contact with us or 3P Learning.

Note: We have written this post as a result of using this website in our classrooms. We have not been asked or paid to write. We are often approached to write posts, but have and will continue to only write about what we have done in our classrooms. We're two full-time class teachers choosing to blog about our experiences.

Writing on iPad (Tablet) Devices*

*or any internet enabled device

This is the second post of two. In the first, we wrote about writing using a tablet as a prompt for writing and now follow it up with a post about writing on a tablet.

1.

We've written many times about using Padlet.com as a tool for sharing writing. Those posts can all be found here. Padlet offers many levels of privacy for the walls created and can be easily accessed from a tablet with a camera using a QR Code. 

2.

TitanPad is an online collaborative writing tool that does not require a login. Again, easiest way to access would be through a QR Code. Collaboration could be within a class, across classes in a school or even between schools. We have used it to collaboratively write a text (instructions, story, recount), list features of a text type, improve a piece of writing, to practise sentence structures and more...

3.

Most recently, and based upon an idea from L Parkinson, we have used the tablet devices for peer assessment of written work. After writing, children take a photograph of their work and then, using Pic Collage (or similar), the children write comments about the work directly on to it and next to the part of the text that is being commented upon. 

4.

The iPad most recently comes pre-loaded with the Pages app, which is a powerful word processing application for writing on a tablet.

Writing with iPad (Tablet) Devices

In the past, we've posted many times about app suggestions. We thought it was about time we wrote about how we use some of them. In this first post of two, we'll write about writing using a tablet as a prompt for writing and will follow it up with a post about writing on a tablet.

We use iPad devices and therefore write about our experiences with those. However, where possible we also do our best to refer to other tablet alternatives. 

Epic Citadel

At a TeachMeet, back in 2011, we were introduced to Epic Citadel. In the app, the user can navigate their way around a fictional Citadel. We have used this while writing stories about Robin Hood and King Arthur. In addition, we have also used it as a 'one off' creative writing task in the first or third person. It's currently available for both iOS and Android. Oh, and it's free!

ColAR Mix

We downloaded ColAR Mix about 18 months ago. We downloaded it because of various messages we saw about it on Twitter. The first time we used the app, we put the colouring sheets on tables and simply asked the children to colour them in on entry to the classroom. Once the sheets were mostly coloured, children were instructed to open the tablets and scan the picture. It's one of the most amazing classroom experiences we've had! The children are amazed! The children were then instructed to, "Write about what's happening on screen". Some descriptive writing followed as the children were engaged.

Next, we made used of the ColAR Christmas and New Year resources. No writing this time, just a it of end of term colouring and enjoyment (that's allowed - isn't it?) Recently ColAR app released some more free images. We used the football playing sheep, and again after colouring, the children wrote recounts, diary entries, stories and more about the sheep. Most recently, we used the Pudsey picture and wrote a recount of 'Pudsey's CiN Disco 2014' (after colouring the picture of course). Colouring in the classroom? Yes! You get some great writing afterwards... Again, free and on both Android and iOS.

 

My Dragon Toy

Very similar to ColAR Mix as it uses similar technology. Give the child a target image, a tablet device, get them to scan, imagine and the write... Yeah, you guessed it - FREE!

Writing instructions

Give the children a game/puzzle to play on the device. Once they've had a jolly good play and hopefully enjoyed themselves, get them to write a set of instructions for how to use said app. These instructions could then be shared with staff, parents and so on... 

Epic Zen Garden

Very similar to Epic Citadel. Making a journey around a fantasy world that can then lead onto fictional writing. 

Using adverts

Advertisements can provide an excellent impetus for writing and this one from Cadbury in 2013 proved a hit with a Year Five class and some lovely writing. With tablet devices, children can watch, forward, rewind and so on in their own time. In addition, using QuietTube helps to remove comments, adverts and more. 

So, there are some ideas for having a tablet device on one part of the desk and writing on paper (the examples here have been typed up for ease of sharing): using it as a reason to write, inspiration for writing or to engage young minds. Writing and tablets does not have to mean writing on them, but that post is coming soon...

More Display Interactivity

This post is a follow up to our post almost exactly three years ago. Since that post about interactive displays, we added Word of the Week in 2012 and we've now added to it further… 

In October, we wrote about #PadletBombing. That blog post came from an idea inspired by Robin Smith. Robin, you're responsible for this one too…

The Padlet Bombing came about from Robin's class working on different sentence types on a weekly basis and using Padlet as a place to share their work. This got us thinking: 'A sentence per week? What could we do with that?'

So, the interactive display has been added to:

We use the Writing Exciting Sentences book (and associated apps) by Alan Peat to aid our teaching of sentence and punctuation variety. The sentence type for the week and examples used on the display come from the book and app. Children can write their own example of the sentence type and then stick it onto the display. We are using a sentence type that links to the text type being taught that week and ask children to write their example as one that could be used in our writing for that text type. 

In addition, we also came across this yesterday:

@alanpeat @Infeducation Our sentence of the week (2A), using an image from #LMYL. pic.twitter.com/uGhKHpRMla
— Tamber7 (@roberts418) November 5, 2014

You may like a separate section for your interactivity or add it to a Working Wall. 

Dice for Writing Exciting Sentences by Text Type

Just over a year ago we posted this. In the past year we've used those dice in our classrooms. The original idea of rolling a dice didn't quite work as any sentence doesn't always work in the context of a piece of writing. We have however used the dice in our lessons more as a 3D reference tool. Children quite like looking at them for inspiration.

In August 2014, Alan Peat contacted us:

@PrimaryIdeas I've RT'd but do you know what I think would work even better - dice with appropriate sentence types for different genres
— Alan Peat (@alanpeat) August 9, 2014

As a result, we've created a set of dice that link to text types.

These dice are based upon the following book: Writing Exciting Sentences The book has been followed up with associated apps. Also a credit to Bryn Goodman, whose advice about which sentences fit each text type was essential.

We hope the dice are useful and thank you again to Alan Peat for his resources.

You Need To Speak Proper (Like What I Do)

In my NQT year, I noticed teaching assistants and other teachers correcting children's speech:

"Er, say thank you."

"Use please next time."

"You mean 'David and I'."

And so on...

In that year, and some since, I was more focused on some of the more basic aspects of the job. However, more recently, I have become aware of the need for children to speak correctly and then how that impacts more widely their ability to communicate, read and indeed write.

This year, a boy in my class had been frequently asking, "Can I go for a toilet?" This, in the past, was something I hadn't corrected with other children. Every time he asked, I corrected and he repeated. Then, last week, with a huge smile he came over and asked, "Can I go to the toilet please?" Of course, the answer (to a Year Five child) was, "There's only five minutes of the lesson left - see if you can wait." But, also, "I'm so pleased you asked correctly." And, I was pleased. I had been persistent and succeeded - I'd taught something (after all, I am a teacher)!

It's so easy to let these slip by. Does it mean the child doesn't know how to speak (and possibly write) correctly, are they being lazy or is it something else? You don't find out if it's not challenged. 

You and I (see what I did there?) have a duty to ensure we teach and, where required, correct children.

Here's What It's Like Around Here

On Monday of this week, a Tweet was posted:

Ahead of meeting new class, I got my current class to write to my next one. Simply stunning outcomes!
— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) June 30, 2014

At the time of writing, that Tweet has 14 ReTweets (even one from Brian Moses) and 19 Favorites. That's a lot for Liam: he's convinced most of his Tweets don't get read by anyone! Lots of interest out of the blue, and to something we though everyone would be doing. Wrong!

It's my 8th year of teaching and this is something I've done every year. Two weeks before 'Transfer Day', I give the children a home learning task to write a letter to a pupil in my next class. Here's how that was worded: 

The results were very impressive. Here are some extracts:

"Finally, you do lots of literacy and maths, but the teachers make it fun!"

"The Isle of Wight is really worth all of the five hours it takes to get there."

"The more time you spend in this year group, the more you will love it!"

"If you get my teacher, you're lucky: he's awesome!"

"The homework's not difficult if you listen in class."

There's a trip to the National Space Centre (not Space, in Leicester) and it's fun."

Your new class get to hear from those who have just experienced a year in your year group, classroom and presence. They tell it how it has been. Good points, not so good points and, at times, pick out aspects of the teacher's personality. They're useful for the teacher to evaluate the year too. 

Most of all, it's impressive to see the time taken by many of them to produce something that shows real empathy with the child who is going to be reading the letter:

Earlier this week, @thisisliamm Tweeted about current class writing letters to next class. Here’s a picture of some: pic.twitter.com/PbrGbOHWZ4
— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) July 2, 2014

Television - Beaming Ideas into your Livingroom!

"Don't watch the TV, it'll make your eyes square!"

"Sitting there all day will do you no good."

Indeed those are good points. Although, the first may not be scientifically accurate. We blogged a while ago about using an idea from a BBC show and we're confident most classes have had a go at the Countdown numbers or letters game.

Recently, we've made use of some ideas from School of Hard Sums. This was aided by some excellent resources from Stuart:

Langford Kebabs

World Cuisine

This made us thinks a little more. How about a classroom activity using Blankety Blank, Pointless, Eggheads Catchphrase and more...

Give it a go and as always. Let us know how you get on.

4 Pics 1 Word in Your Classroom

On Saturday, I was sat near a child on a train who was playing 4 Pics 1 Word on his father's phone. Then, when I returned home, my other half was requesting help with a puzzle she was stuck on. In the way it often does, my mind struck up and started to ponder how this could be used in a classroom. 

Idea 1: Children create their own puzzles for others to try to solve. Possibly using homophones or where the same word (eg stamp or smoking) can fall into a number of different word types:

Idea 2: During a topic of work (eg in geography or science), use the puzzles to introduce or recap vocabulary: 

#4pics1word Blog post: http://t.co/PkeSVgQEUq Example: pic.twitter.com/m8hdXpylV3
— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) April 10, 2014

Idea 3: Use it as a method of introducing new vocabulary.

Note: We have not seen this idea anywhere else. Well done if you've come up with similar. As far as we're aware, creating one's own 4 Pics 1 Word is not copyright - please inform us otherwise if it is. Finally, the pictures used in our example all came from a Creative Commons Image Search - you should do the same (or take your own).

We gave it a go with a Year Five class. The class used iPad devices and the app Pic Collage. With very minimal instructions, here's what they came up with. The examples are also available to download from Dropbox.

Image Credits:
www.royalmail.com/personal/uk-delivery/2nd-class-mail
openclipart.org
blog.mirage.lincolnapts.com/food/pick-and-stomp-your-own-grapes-at-messina-hof-winery
www.flickr.com/photos/tico24/16673698
pixabay.com/en/river-stone-water-cold-murmur-177304
www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1491537
www.cpsb.pt/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bolo.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Faucet_in_a_bathroom_sink.jpg

Two Sentence Stories

We saw a Tweet from @Bennett31:

@alanpeat @redgierob @InspiredMind5 @ICT_MrP horror stories in two sentences! I like this idea http://t.co/b0XuEDvgqP
— MrB (@Bennett31) February 28, 2014

We thought it was an excellent idea! So, we gave it a go...

Stasy: Silently, I crept down the stairs- bare feet freezing cold on the hard, stony floor... My heavy breathing totally drowned out every other sound,except the strange, banging thump from above, I was petrified...

Owen: When I turned the light on, I still couldn't see anything.

See the rest here: http://padlet.com/wall/2SentHorr

Next, we plan to have a go at Two Sentence Romance, Sci-Fi, Crime, Action... 

Countdown Inspired Literacy Game

Last week, I was working with a group in literacy. Our focus was sentence structure and making our sentences more interesting. Whilst working on whiteboards I come up with the following...

I asked each of the six children for a word or type of punctuation:

"James give me a verb" - jumping

"Oliver, an adjective" - pink

"Sarah a piece of punctuation please" - exclamation mark

"Luke give me a noun" - football

"George, another punctuation" - brackets

"David an adverb please" - quickly

So, I wrote down: 'jumping, pink, !, football, ( ) and quickly' and told the children to write a sentence including all of those.

Some did it easier than others, some found it very tricky and sometimes the sentences were bizarre. They could add anything they wanted to the sentence, but it had to make sense and include everything from the prompt.

Quickly, Adam (who did not like heights) climbed the large daunting tree to retrieve the pink football!

It's like asking for letters or numbers in Countdown. In time, a set of cards with words and punctuation may even be made... 

Here there's a Scratch project to support this game