At this stage, you will experience the activities from the perspective of the student. As we have limited time in the workshop, we will divide you into 6 groups, and give you instructions to follow in each group. The tutor will be mingling amongst you to help with procedures, ideas and the development of your work. Some of the work you generate at this point will be used as the material for formative assessment practice in Part 4 of the day.

Important note: if you were to run these activities with your students, you would not give them the instructions to follow (remember that we have used this method in the workshop today because of time constraints). Instead, as a teacher, you would lead the students, stage by stage, through the activities.

Therefore, as you are working through the activities, think about the sequencing of your presentational language, your concept checking questions, your instructions and your roundup questions. This will help you decide which stages may need to be modified for the needs of your particular groups.

Materials provided on Good Closings These materials are not demonstrated in the training session due to time constraints. Co-constructing a story
Providing whole class brainstorming at the start of a writing lesson on an area such as character, setting or plot can help generate ideas and language for students to use.

You could prompt this through something as simple as focusing on words starting with the same letter, in this lesson the letter ‘P’ or with a grid of topics to include in a story (handout) It is important to allow for all students to add their ideas to the story so giving each student an area of responsibility to add to the story recipe can help prompt this. For example, one student decides on a character for the story, another student decides on a location, another student decides on some verbs to use in the story. The students in groups then make a story using as many of the ideas as possible. Students may be able to build a story by telling it together in a whole class group and then write their individual version.

Students may build a story in small group orally and then write it together. You may want students to write a draft of the story together as their first draft. You will need to remind students that everyone needs to take part in the creating and writing so that the strong writer doesn’t take over.

Chains of Action This is a technique to quickly generate plot ideas. They can be created individually, in small groups or as a whole class. They could be directly recorded as they are created or they could be written on to a worksheet.