Inspiring Reading And Writing- Murray Gadd

Attended this session with Murray Gadd on Reading and Writing- What is critical for all ( especially under-achieving and reluctant) readers and writers?
This man has clearly done some research in this area and many of it made sense. The eight dimensions that he came up with made perfect sense. It was interesting to see what he found to be the one that helps to generate learner gains and decreases the achieving gap. I have over the last few years realised the importance of direct instruction in teaching and this is important for the children to gain more from the lesson.

It was nice to be reminded on the fact that writing topics comes from
-the students' own experiences, understanding and interests
-the texts that students access: or
-the cross-curriculum findings and challenges that emerge from classroom inquiry

He appeared that he didn't like the Monday recount pieces of writing, although I do believe there is a time and a place for that. I think for some children that is definitely a stage they go through and does fit under their own experiences aspect. I know in my class I started with writing about their weekend and t was good for awhile as it gave them confidence in writing what they knew. However I have now moved on to imaginary writing for most.  I liked some of his ideas of using text in stories to motivate children for writing. I plan to do this as another way to inspire writing as have not really done it in awhile. I liked when he got his children to write about only an aspect of the story. It is great to let the children to have a choice in writing when they can. Also his questioning was good to get more out of the children to write.

This speaker has made me think about checking out some more books to inspire the children to write.