Inspired by FootieFanMiss' Working Walls, this year I have kept a writing display as a fluid way of recording what we are learning and to help children improve their writing. This is definitely a work-in-progress but the kids are really enjoying using it at the moment and it is having more impact than many of my displays have before! This short, photo-heavy post will be a quick tour of what's on there and why! To start with, this photo shows the wall as a whole. I've called it "Scribble HQ" after the the location in my favourite children's book, Scribbleboy by Phillip Ridley. I tend to read part or all of this book to every class so they understand the link!
We are really focusing, in year 4, on word types so we have some mini word - clouds. Some of them are pre-made but most are the children's ideas, sometimes with names or initials to give them ownership of the words.
There is a space for our Alan Peat sentence of the week.
Next to this are some examples of the Alan Peat sentences in the books we have read as a class. The children have got really good about pointing these out as we're reading so I try and bookmark them and write them up!
When children bring in work which they've done at home linked to our writing, that goes on Scribble HQ too.
I can use the display to address any little misconceptions which are consistent across the class. Here you can see they are struggling to differentiate between these two words so this should remind them, complete with my lovely stick men!
These post-it notes have been added this week because we are working on inverted commas for speech. I stole some words instead of "said" from children's work, wrote it on a speech bubble and put their initial on it. We'll add to these over the next few weeks so that children can have a variety to choose from.
As I said, this is just a start and something I'm experimenting with this year. I was a bit hesitant at first as I was unsure that it would be used by the kids and was worried it would take forever to do. However I've found most of the content can be added in lessons and the kids use it all the time!
UPDATE July 2015:
This is how the Scribble HQ display looks at the end of the year (minus my finger and stapler - sorry!). There are a few additions that are probably quite unclear:
th (top left) - lots of my class use f or v instead of sticking their tongue out for th. Cue a quick doodle to model it correctly.
cos > because (at the bottom left) - I'm trying to counteract this lazy speech.
Tricky Spellings (top in the middle) - I just keep adding to this when particularly hard spellings crop up.
TiP ToP paragraphs (top right) - just a quick reminder.
Prefixes and suffixes (top left) - trying to make this part of their everyday language.
I have always tried to make my working walls interactive, but they never seem to get used that much by the children. I love this idea, and I will be giving it a go this year to see how it goes!
ReplyDeleteLove the sentence of the week idea. Where did you find the sentence types poster for Alan Peat? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul,
DeleteAs a school, we made logos to go with the AP sentences.
Jo