Writing program

 Develop an action plan

 

NAME: Virginia Vega Calvo

AGE GROUP/S YOU TEACH:  lower primary 

SUBJECT/S YOU TEACH: English, Social and Natural Science and Arts 

One of my greatest concerns in the English class is how to address the writing process. After taking this course – Building Literacy Skills-, I became more aware that the writing process needs to start long before learners start using their pencils on papers. From now on, I will commit myself to invest quality and effective writing time (starting in first grade).

 While taking this course I really needed to stop to think if I was helping my learners building up writing skills or if on the contrary I was fostering fear and anxiety towards the writing.

After much analyzing the situation of my school and the bilingual project, we have reached the conclusion of starting a complete writing program: we have planned to include in the English lesson more written input and more productions by the students. The two main and novel parts of our programme will be:

-          Morning Messages (in every single English lesson).

-          Journal Writing (on Fridays). (These two techniques have been chosen after doing some research) 

 

Morning Message is a message written by the teacher for the class to read. It usually highlights some aspect of learning for the day, or it can be a way to reinforce what learning took place the previous day. It gives us a proper writing input.

 

Journal writing: it is a painless way to develop writing skills. It can be a powerful strategy for students to gain writing fluency in writing ( they can start with pictures and they can share if they want). We do not correct the mistakes otherwise learners can get frustrated, besides the journal itself becomes a valuable, ongoing record of a student's development in writing over or school year.

We can summarize the benefits into these three aspects:

·        It reinforces literacy and other learning skills.

·         It encourages a sense of collective responsibility for learning.

·         It helps ALL students to focus on learning.

 

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