Michael Absolum's Clarity in the Classroom. My Focus for TAI

Spiral of Inquiry - Focus/ Taking Action:

Chapter 3

My focus for the beginning of TAI, feel my students could get a lot better about being clear about what is to be learnt.

Research suggests When students are clear about what is to be learnt there are significant shifts for the students.

• their motivation improves
• they stay on task
• behaviour improves
• more apt to engage in self-regulation (so take more responsibility for their learning).

TO support my learners to become clearer about their learning ( as they are not in stage 4, and this is where I ultimately want them)  I will improve 2 things

1. BE more persistent at naming or identifying the learning (Learning Intentions)
2. Describing the learning (models, exemplars and success criteria).

I know all the above and do, do this most of the time, however when things get busy I will sometimes slip this or write it in the plan, which students get, but I am obviously not putting enough emphasis on this.

I have begun this in writing Week 1 and getting the students to write the Success Criteria themselves, (rather than a typed sheet,) in their draft and only getting the students to assess their writing buddies on the success criteria and this alone. 

I noticed that how the students commented needs explicit teaching as still, the comments from writing buddies varies below to students I have had for a year, Year 6's compared to Year 5's. The lesson purpose was to write to persuade a reader. 

L.I. to use a planner to plan our writing

To use persuasive sentence starters in each paragraph.

SC to match above.

Here are some examples of comments - What I was working on this week.

Year 6 student

Year 6 Student

Year 5

I also want to focus my teacher commenting too to be purposeful and manageable so I have set up a time table to concentrate on certain groups in certain weeks.