Senior School Observation

This morning I observed Alannah Lupe teaching writing to her Year 5 and 6 class. They started with a warm up on a whole class google doc adding a subordinate clause to a sentence Alannah had provided. Students were working collaboratively in groups of 2-3, each taking turns to contribute ideas and words to improve the sentence. They also highlighted the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in each sentence. Each group had their own box to add to, but could read other students ideas and gather inspiration from the whole class.

Alannah's class work very well together. She is an expert in expecting collaboration from her students and they understand that they can learn from each other. Throughout the morning I heard the students sharing ideas in small groups and with the whole class, giving feedback and feed forward in a very accepting way. The feedback and feedforward was oral and in writing in the google doc. Students were very clear on the expectations around this. Alannah said they wouldn't have been at this level in term 1, but through lots of practise they were well trained up.

Students moved on to ANZAC writing after the warm up. One student read his aloud to the class and also received feedforward and feedback. This feels like a very natural part of the class.

Implications for my practise

It was great to see feedback and feedforward done so well in Alannah's class. I can definitely step this up in my own class, giving clear expectations as to what this entails. Feedback - something they did well. Feedforward - something to improve on. 

I also loved seeing the shared google doc in action. I feel that my class are comfortable now with being familiar with their devices and that they would be able to handle something similar. I might try it this afternoon with a shared doc for ignition for our intro into Oceans.