Although this chapter focused heavily on the Principal of a
school and the importance of an engagement approach that allows Principals to
help teachers make the links between the problems they are trying to solve and
the belief and values that explain those actions. I personally made a
connection between this and my and others ideas of best practise when teaching writing.
When we teach reading we follow our shared practise of
modelled/shared reading, guided reading, followed by independent reading tasks.
This time is used for students to practise the skills learnt through modelled,
shared and guided sessions. However in writing, I feel educators can strengthen
the learning involved throughout the guided writing step. In our shared practise
of writing we model and share writing strategies that are designed to suit the
needs of the students. Our shared practise in writing sees teachers complete a guided
writing session with a selected number of students after the modelled/shared
writing session. However, most students are left to work independently. We
assume students understand the modelled/shared strategies and we ask students
to “apply it” on their own. We therefore ask students to figure out how to
integrate new strategies into their existing theory of action. This has me questioning
the effectiveness of our guided writing sessions with one group of students a
day. I am asking myself is this enough to assist students with their
preconceptions of writing, or is there a better way we can assist students through
the guided writing process? Should be expect students to be able to apply these
strategies independently? I’m interested to get your feedback.
I certainly think that questioning strategies at this deep level is the way to go. I suppose that unpacking the rights of the writer with children and fully understanding and discussing the writing purpose is a way of upacking the ToA as part of the learning. In a way the Learning Intention and success criteria is a way of aligning their ToA. I also believe that the best way to respond to your questions is to actually fill in a Beliefs/Action/ and Consequence grid in relation to children to see if it fits. I think this is worth doing.
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