Sarah's+Journal

The purpose of our TLLP project is to provide students with an opportunity to talk before they write. Our team firmly believes that students will improve the quality of their written output if they are first given the opportunity to record their thinking on ipads.

For primary students, the act of writing requires a great deal of effort, however the act of sharing their thinking through speaking comes naturally. Given this, once a child has responded to texts through writing, they are much more resistant to making revisions. It is our hope that this generation of technologically driven students will be much more open to revising oral responses, which are effortlessly recorded on the ipads.

Date: Oct 3 - Oct. 25 Day 1 Synthesizing: After a modelled lesson of using the Reading Strategy of Synthesizing to understand a text, I released the students to complete a diagnostic assessment. I had the students complete a synthesis of how worms help the soil. When I handed out the lined paper and presented the students with the assignment, a student looked at me and said, "You mean you want me to write without talking on the ipads first?!" He looked completely shocked when I responded with, "yes please but don't worry it's only a diagnostic for me, you will get a chance to record in your literacy centers this week."

This child's diagnostic response for the synthesizing task was VERY BASIC.

Day 2- Day 14 Synthesizing: During the remaining days of our synthesis unit, students were given many opportunities to synthesize messages from media texts (both read and viewed) through our balanced literacy rotations. Once in their literacy groups, students were provided with an ipad, a copy of the reading material, a task card indicating the learning goals and success criteria for the synthesis job, a chart to make jot notes on, and a script to follow to guide them in making their oral synthesis.

The chart headings:

prior knowledge new knowledge new understanding what I already know what I learned from reading

The Script: Before reading ___ I knew...(prior knowledge) During reading I found out ... (new knowledge) Now I understand... (combination of your prior knowledge + new knowledge = new understanding)

Each time students completed a recording, they were required to give each other feedback (stars and arrows) based on the success criteria we developed as a whole class.

The success criteria:

Throughout the unit, we provided many opportunites to view students' oral synthesis responses and provide whole group feedback (stars and arrows)

Samples of Literacy Center Tasks: Date: Thurs., Oct. 25, 2012. Day 15 Synthesizing At this point in the synthesizing unit, students where given a culminating task: