Writing - Pasifika Boys, Charlene Mataio; Tools4Teachers

• My favourite thing about writing is ... 
• My least favourite thing about writing is...
• What do you like writing about best?
• Do you write at home? 
• What do you think about your handwriting? 
•  is it easy for you to form your letters? 
• How do you feel about spelling? 
• When we write in school I wish we were allowed to... 

The key is teaching students to notice the everyday. 

Why write?
We write to make sense of ourselves and our world, and to communicate.
Individual children each bring their own unique experience of their family and culture with them. 

All young writers have something to say. 

We write best about what we know.
writers notice and respond, non-writers don't. 

Beliefs shape the way we teach. 

"Children need models rather than critics" Joseph Joubert 

Give writers the opportunity they usually have 3 life topics they will go back to. It's your job to teach them what they don't know, about what they know. 

Do we teach to the writing? Or do we teach the writer? - Be mindful of knowing your learners and what that student needs at that time. 

Read like a writer and write like a reader.

Oral rehearsal is really important, how am I weaving oral language through my writing programme? Think it, say it, write it.  

Maori & pacifika come from a largely oral history - value it!

Ideas 

Generate ideas for writing 

Focus on the seed, not the watermelon (small moments)

Specific details/significance

Does writing always have to look written? Could be hand written, typed, drawn, video (a way to scaffold). 

Generating Ideas, Neighbourhood Maps. Example in Marshfield Dreams - Ralph Fletcher.
Making observations of the everyday. 

James Gulliver Hancock - looking at ourselves, looking at our 'authorities' 

6 word memoir 

School Journal poem - Nothing every happens at my house. 

Actions: 

Display the messy writing - the organisation, the idea selection process etc. 

Mentor texts 

Use video - scaffold writing

Neighbourhood maps