Using "Think Puzzle Explore" and Sorting to Help EAL Students Become Better Writers in Grade 2

In the EAL Grade 2 class this week, in anticipation that many of our language learners would be writing emotions poems at some point in the next week, we began to inquire into the following question:

"How do good writers make their writing more interesting?"

After positing this question, Ms. Mom, Ms. Boramey and I immediately divided the students into three groups in order to go through a Visible Thinking Routine with the children entitled Think Puzzle Explore.

In working through this thinking routine, students were asked to write down what they already thought they knew about the answer to our question and what puzzled them about the question. We then, as a group came up with ideas on how we could explore finding answers to this question. As you can see below, student groups came up with many ideas on what good writers needed to do. In the larger class group, we zoomed in on one students assertion that good writers added lots of details. Other students then asked questions like:

• How did good writers add details? 
• How did they write so fast? 
• How did they write so much?

We then devised lessons which we hoped would give students more proficiency with language tools that would allow them to quickly add more details to their writing, mainly be making it more descriptive. Our goal was also to give them ideas for improving as writers that would transfer to work they were doing in homerooms related to writing poems about emotions. We decided that students would benefit from doing a bit of work with interesting adjectives and prepositions of place that they could use in describing while writing.

First, we created a Mix activity, in which we gave students either a describing word (adjective) or a thing (noun) on a piece of paper. We echo read all the words as a class and then asked students to circulate around the room reading out loud, sharing, and exchanging their words with each other for about 3 minutes in order to expose students to a variety of language with which they might not already be familiar. We then asked students to stop, and make a guess as to whether their word was a noun, something you could touch, take or draw a picture of, and/or see/hear/taste/feel/smell. We then asked students to come stick their words under the heading of NOUN (Thing) or ADJECTIVE (Describing word). This produced many interesting results which made us as teachers aware that students were very confused as to not only adjective forms and endings, but what actually constitutes "a thing". As teachers, we decided students would need to do a little more exploration of these concepts.

The next lesson, we had students refocus on the fact that we were learning ways to make our writing more interesting, and were really going to concentrate today on building up some knowledge of words that could be used to describe how something tastes, looks, sounds, smells, and feels. Students again mixed and exchanged words, this time only adjectives, before going to meet with a teacher who shared a number from 1-3 that students found on their individual words. In these three groups, students and teachers classified words based on which of the five senses they helped describe, and then we shared our sorts with the class.

Next steps? Now to link it all up! Next week students will do a partner sort at their desk, matching appropriate adjectives of taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound to relevant nouns before completing an exit ticket or drafting and revising poems that are extensions of what students are writing in their homerooms! Students will also engage in a writing/treasure hunt activity to give them practice with identifying location.

Supporting Writing Through Scaffolds and the Writing Process and Reading Through Teaching Cognitive Academic Language in Grade 2

It was a busy week with assemblies, Back-to-School Night, and meetings but Ms. Mom and I managed to provide our Grade 2 EAL students (and homeroom students in general) with the following learning engagements this week:

On Monday, we jumped right into a Finding Out research/reading/viewing series of lessons in which students learned about how the amount of sleep they need compares to the amount of sleep needed by various animals. Us EAL teachers saw this as an opportunity to practice speaking and using English for the language purpose of "comparing". As such, Mom and I modelled having different amounts of paintbrushes and asked students to compare using the key sentence frames of:

(Name) has more/less (paintbrushes) than (Name).

We then each pretended to sleep and wake up after different amounts of time and transferred this comparison language to:

(Name) gets more/less (sleep) than (Name).

Students practiced saying these model sentences in various formats and we wrote them onto our small instructional whiteboard so that they would be visible throughout the instruction.

We then analysed an information gathering graphic organiser and it's accompanying text together that we would use while viewing a slideshow on iPads about sleep on Kids Health.org. We used this graphic organiser both to teach the terms "table", "columns", and "rows" and as a device to preview the information students would find on the slideshow. We previewed this information by asking students to make predictions as to whether they thought animals got more or less sleep than they themselves did. We discussed how we were going to view a slideshow to see if our predictions were correct.

On Tuesday, these students then viewed the slideshow and were able to orally discuss the comparisons of sleep amounts in full sentences. Students also began to discuss whose final responsibility it was to get the recommended amount of sleep, 10 - 11 hours, THEIR OWN! They also discussed reasons why it was important to get this amount of sleep.

In another grade 2 class, as an EAL team, we created scaffolds for all students to help them draft a poem about an emotion of their choice in an effort to help them understand these emotions and how they might affect our senses of wellbeing. Together with the homeroom teacher. we modelled use of this scaffold, also taking the opportunity to introduce the concept of the writing process.

We discussed how we had done some prewriting together, coming up with ideas for different emotions, and that now we were going to draft. Students drafted, at times being supported and encouraged to think deeper by the homeroom teacher, Ms. Mom, and myself. Afterwards, students shared with a buddy, and some students volunteered to share their work on the carpet. Tagging on to this, the homeroom teacher and I asked, "As good writers, are we finished with these poems?" Students answered no and we affirmed that tomorrow we were going to learn one way that good writers can revise their work, by getting feedback from peers!

The next morning, as a team, the homeroom teacher and I introduced students to the concept of peer conferencing as a way to gain ideas for revision. One method of peer conferencing that we conceived of, which also ties into teaching students to inquire, involves asking each other questions about our writing. We first asked students to remind us of the question words that would give us the most information. We listed these on the whiteboard for student reference. I then modelled coming up with questions that came to mind when I read the first draft of the homeroom teacher's emotion poem that she had modelled writing yesterday. I wrote these questions down on sticky notes, which I then stuck at the appropriate places in her poem. She in turn modelled adding to her poem, based on information I requested on the stickies.

We then paired students together and asked them to do the same thing! Students loved reading each other's poems and asking questions. In this lesson many students also began the process of revision by adding the requested information.

In later lessons, as a team, we planned to have students revise for sentence variety as well, by asking students to try and think of adjectives related to sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch in favour of sentences discussing how an emotion was "like" an object.

We also plan to help our EAL students and all writers in the class to make connections between the writing cycle and a growth mindset, the idea behind our current unit of inquiry being that "Our choices and mindset affect our personal wellbeing." We want students to understand that good writers believe in growth. They believe that through seeking feedback, revising, and changing what they have written in first drafts they create more satisfying and communicative pieces.