The Literacy Shed. A miracle in teaching.
A bold statement: yes. An exaggeration? Most certainly not. (And before you ask, no, I'm not getting commission...:) )
I have a passion for English, especially teaching Writing, there's something about the progress you can so visibly see as a teacher that gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling. As a NQT (nearly 2 years ago) I knew the power of using visual resources to engage and excite and yet I struggled with the endless rubbish quality youtube videos and buffering that wasted most of the lesson. And then I discovered The Literacy Shed.
I've used this website a million times since my 'Hallelujah' moment. The Catch. Replay. Before Sunrise. All fantastic videos which I fully recommend but this blog is all about Alma.
Alma transformed writing with my class this year. I can't emphasize how important this video was in completely altering my class's perspective on writing. They loved it, adored it and the result: a class book with stunning results. (And for those who are all about the data- level 3B's producing 4A writing. See? Told you.)
So what's it all about? Alma is simple, a 5 minute 29 second miracle worker. No speaking. One character. A young girl bounds along an empty, snowy street. She stops at a blackboard of names (weird), turns and sees a doll in a shop window. The even weirder part? The doll is dressed just like her. She attempts to enter, locked. As she walks away, the door opens and she enters. Creepy. You want to know the end? GO AND WATCH IT!
Anyway, back to my class and their transformation. Watching the video first time, I wasn't sure. Are my 18 boisterous boys going to appreciate a video about a young girl and a toy shop? How wrong I was. We started the unit discussing suspense. What is it? How can we see it in our writing? We then watched Alma. Pausing at different points; questions, questions, predictions, questions. They were enthralled. The beauty about this video (as with most of the others I've used) is the lack of voice. The children can become Alma. What is she thinking? Why did she do that? Describe her personality, support your view with a piece of evidence. Our 'shared reading' was the video. They quite literally 'read' the images and articulated themselves well because of the high-quality.
Our unit was based on re-telling Alma with a clear focus on Suspense writing.
We brainstormed vocabulary based on the setting to start with, the children did the work. Up-leveling constantly. We used still images from Alma as a stimulus for description which in turn, built suspense.
The best part about this week worth of writing was that the video did all of my work. No tricks, no bells and whistles, just a powerful video and the children's brains. Match made in heaven. I broke each day into a section of story mountain. The steps to success were focused on suspense writing for that particular section of the mountain.
And what I know you've all been waiting for...the results! Here's a range of work showing (off) some children in my class and the results. Just to prove how effective it was, I've written the level the child started the year at.
A bold statement: yes. An exaggeration? Most certainly not. (And before you ask, no, I'm not getting commission...:) )
I have a passion for English, especially teaching Writing, there's something about the progress you can so visibly see as a teacher that gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling. As a NQT (nearly 2 years ago) I knew the power of using visual resources to engage and excite and yet I struggled with the endless rubbish quality youtube videos and buffering that wasted most of the lesson. And then I discovered The Literacy Shed.
I've used this website a million times since my 'Hallelujah' moment. The Catch. Replay. Before Sunrise. All fantastic videos which I fully recommend but this blog is all about Alma.
Alma transformed writing with my class this year. I can't emphasize how important this video was in completely altering my class's perspective on writing. They loved it, adored it and the result: a class book with stunning results. (And for those who are all about the data- level 3B's producing 4A writing. See? Told you.)
So what's it all about? Alma is simple, a 5 minute 29 second miracle worker. No speaking. One character. A young girl bounds along an empty, snowy street. She stops at a blackboard of names (weird), turns and sees a doll in a shop window. The even weirder part? The doll is dressed just like her. She attempts to enter, locked. As she walks away, the door opens and she enters. Creepy. You want to know the end? GO AND WATCH IT!
Anyway, back to my class and their transformation. Watching the video first time, I wasn't sure. Are my 18 boisterous boys going to appreciate a video about a young girl and a toy shop? How wrong I was. We started the unit discussing suspense. What is it? How can we see it in our writing? We then watched Alma. Pausing at different points; questions, questions, predictions, questions. They were enthralled. The beauty about this video (as with most of the others I've used) is the lack of voice. The children can become Alma. What is she thinking? Why did she do that? Describe her personality, support your view with a piece of evidence. Our 'shared reading' was the video. They quite literally 'read' the images and articulated themselves well because of the high-quality.
Our unit was based on re-telling Alma with a clear focus on Suspense writing.
We brainstormed vocabulary based on the setting to start with, the children did the work. Up-leveling constantly. We used still images from Alma as a stimulus for description which in turn, built suspense.
The best part about this week worth of writing was that the video did all of my work. No tricks, no bells and whistles, just a powerful video and the children's brains. Match made in heaven. I broke each day into a section of story mountain. The steps to success were focused on suspense writing for that particular section of the mountain.
And what I know you've all been waiting for...the results! Here's a range of work showing (off) some children in my class and the results. Just to prove how effective it was, I've written the level the child started the year at.
One of my super stars. This child started the year at a 4B. EAL. This work was completed in the second week of January.
A student who is always reaching for the thesaurus. My aim this year has been to make her step away...she's a fantastic writer and conveys her ideas well. What do you think?
A student who is always reaching for the thesaurus. My aim this year has been to make her step away...she's a fantastic writer and conveys her ideas well. What do you think?
One of the 'boisterous boys'. Began the year at a 3B!
I love how he's worked on extending his sentences with complex and compound sentences. His vocabulary astounded me with this piece of work.
I love how he's worked on extending his sentences with complex and compound sentences. His vocabulary astounded me with this piece of work.
This lovely handwriting belongs to an EAL child. She started this year at a 3B. (Just!) She finds it hard to 'hear' when her sentence doesn't make sense. She's worked really hard on her use of adverbial phrases and I'm really impressed with her use of punctuation. Very proud teacher.
Began the year at a 4C.
The use of imagery is very powerful here, I like his personification of the wind to hint at the tone of the story...Hello pathetic fallacy!
(Yes, I teach this to the children, they love this concept!)
The use of imagery is very powerful here, I like his personification of the wind to hint at the tone of the story...Hello pathetic fallacy!
(Yes, I teach this to the children, they love this concept!)
http://www.literacyshed.com/the-ghostly-shed.html (You will need this link in your life. Scroll down the page to find Alma.)
So there you have it. Alma. The best resource I've had in my classroom this year. Thank you Literacy Shed.
So there you have it. Alma. The best resource I've had in my classroom this year. Thank you Literacy Shed.