Grape Eggs.mov

Direct Instruction

The learning intention for this lesson was for the children to write a recount about an event, including words to describe how they felt.

The video shows the learning experience, as well as some group work with my Bubbles group, immediately following the experience.

Extended Lesson Plan

Reflection

I had lots of fun doing something a bit different with my class. I was apprehensive going into it as I wasn't sure if they would all cope so well with the disappointment of discovering their Easter Egg was in fact a grape!

I would have liked to have included more of a focus on descriptive language, but decided to park this aspect for another day. We are still really just trying to structure our recounts correctly, and other than talking about how we felt when discovering we had been tricked, I wanted to maintain that focus as it could easily get lost at this stage.

I may have been too ambitious in my hopes for the outcomes of the children's writing. Many of them cannot write independently, and those that can, are reluctant to follow set structures, preferring to ramble with their strong personal voices. Keeping in mind how early into Year 2 we are, I am quite pleased with their results. By the end of the year however, I will want there to be much more descriptive and emotive language evident after an experience such as this.

Things to Note

All groups wrote about this experience to different levels of success criteria. The Bubbles wrote on the day, the Pencils followed the next day, and the Rainbows followed up on the Wednesday. Children who were away for the experience also wrote about it as they enjoyed watching the video I had made and seeing what happened at school while they were away.

In Year 2, we are just starting to learn how to post our work to our blog. I like to keep their blog posts as authentic to their learning as possible, so you will commonly find errors in their spelling and punctuation at this stage. When you do find a longer, tricky word spelt correctly, this is usually the result of the teacher gifting the word to the student in anticipation of their blogging.

I will go in and edit a little to ensure meaning is clear, and to check for unhelpful autocorrecting that can occur on their iPads.