6th Oct to 12th Oct update

We've got lots to blog about since our last post.  On 6th October we went to our second Muffins and Mindmaps session.  The focus was requirements analysis.  We had to came away with a number of things to think about including:

- Who are the stakeholders?  e.g. the group, the children, teachers in the school, parents and governors.  These people will have different needs and ideas about what the project is.  It can be difficult to align the children's needs with those of the adults.

- Setting clear objectives for your project

- Give people models to work with and get feedback on these models (iterative prototyping).  Evaluate your plans regularly.

- Promote discussion by using the models mentioned above.  Think about using the diamond analysis.

After this we had a tutorial with VL to discuss the progress we've made.  She was really pleased with our ideas and the overview we have produced.  She came up with some suggestions about getting local media involved and trying to find some local celebrities for the children to interview.  After the tutorial we emailed some people and got in touch with the Chichester Observer.  We have a few tentative links and we're currently in the process of exploiting these for the benefit of the children.  The Observer has agreed to run a piece about the project this week.  They will follow this up by coming to the school after our visit to the local radio station to take a picture of us and the children.  We hope the children like this! 

Later on in the day we met with JW.  She kindly came into university to meet with us and discuss our plans.  This went really well and JW seemed impressed with our ideas.  we confirmed timings for each lesson and these have been booked in.  We had now made an action plan of things we need to confirm, such as visits and resources.  This was emailed to JW on 8th October. 

On 8th October we got in touch with AW, an ICT technician at the university.  We decided it might be easier to borrow some laptops ready loaded with software that is easy to use and bring these into school for the lessons.  This means we will be familiar with the software which should ensure things go smoothly.

We also had a really good chat with CS, an ICT lecturer as we had some questions about copyrighting this blog and the plans that we publish on here.  This discussion was really useful and we came away with some firm ideas about how to go about this.  CS also seemed to quite impressed with the project that we're doing.  It's really encouraging to hear this from people you respect; hopefully we are doing something right!

© Sophia Koiston, Oliver Hughes and Helen Goodall 2010

An update of where we are

This might seem a little backward but we thought we'd post an update of the last week's activities.  On Wednesday (30th September) we met with our contact with the secondary school.  We went in with some ideas that we've posted previously.  The meeting went well but we came out knowing that we had to rethink our plans.  However we were really excited about this as our remit is much wider than we had previously thought.  Our new focus is marrying together Literacy and Technology into a 6 week intervention that really engages the children.  The school seems really supportive, especially the Headteacher, and of course our contact, JW. 

JW is coming to visit us at University on 6th October to to discuss the progress we have made since the last meeting.  We will also be meeting with VL, our Creativity tutor to keep her in the loop.

Here is a link to some golden rules for project management that we developed in our first 'Muffins and Mindmaps' meeting.  We came up with the ideas as a group and our tutor DR kindly collated them...Click here for the Golden Rules to Project Management

Overview of the Intervention

We spent today coming up with a more detailed plan of what we wish to achieve and do over the course of the 6 weeks that we have with the children.
Click here to see our plans

Making good progress in KS3

We had our first meeting with the school today, of which more to follow.  For now, here is a link to some documentation that might be useful... Making good progress in KS3

S

Everbody Writes Day - 21st October 2010

A Guide for Secondary Schools

This might something useful for the school to get involved in if they don't already.

CLPE Writing scales

Here is a link that might be useful when planning our intervention...

CLPE writing scale 2

It is discussed in the paper Putting literature at the heart of the literacy curriculum (Nicholson, 2006).  What do you think?

Handout for the meeting

Raising attainment in literacy

By looking at the information available to us, including Ofsted reports, the school’s website and the previous creativity project we have begun to come up with a picture of where the school currently stands with regard to literacy. 

Our aims

Building on the success of last year’s project, we propose a programme focusing on developing pupils as writers.  Using the critical reading skills acquired through the intervention Ready Steady Book, we hope to remove barriers within the reader writer relationship and therefore increase attainment. 

We would like to consult the pupils that we will be working with in order to incorporate their interests and ideas about what would work for them into the programme.  Some of our initial thoughts would be to:

introduce response partners

look at the talk for writing model

model and scaffold the writing process explicitly with the children

shared writing

develop success criteria through a genre approach

develop writing through immersion in text type

writing frames/ starters

displays to aid writing / working walls

ensure creative purpose and audience e.g. blog, book, or magazine.