Case study: early primary x

Teaching sequence based on Three by the Sea by Mini Grey (W4.2)

Abi planned a teaching sequence for her 6–7 year olds, based on Mini Grey’s Three by the Sea to help develop the children’s language choices and narrative writing. The main written outcome of the three-week teaching sequence was a first person narrative written from the point of view of Dog, Cat or Mouse. The role play area had been transformed into a beach hut and the children invited to make decorations for it based on their reading and any experience they had of the sea side.

Throughout the teaching sequence, the children had numerous opportunities to talk and write. Abi regularly modelled application of the skills she was teaching, for example, after reading the story several times, she told and re-told the narrative to help the children get a sense of narrative structure and to model the use of appropriate language choices. The children engaged in discussion in order to unpick story events, for example, to consider what The Winds of Change might mean. When the children were familiar with the events of the narrative, they began to explore the main characters. In one oral activity, the children used a zone of relevance target board (see Figure W4.2.1 below) to select adjectives to describe the character of The Stranger. Words that are most appropriate are placed in the centre of and less relevant vocabulary is moved away from the zone’s target.

Abi prepared a suitcase with a range of adjectives on them. This was passed around small mixed ability groups of children. Each child retrieved a word and considered: Does this word describe The Stranger? They were then required to justify their opinion using the text and their knowledge of the character. In order to support the children’s use of Standard English and sentence construction, prompts were used to scaffold oral responses. These included, ‘The Stranger is….’. The children offered: ‘The Stranger is mysterious because he just comes from nowhere.’ ‘The Stranger is sly because he talks about the animals behind their backs.’ Following this talk, Abi demonstrated how to select adjectives for writing and the children wrote sentences about The Stranger to put on a ‘Wanted’ advertisement for him as he had disappeared so quickly and mysteriously.

During the three-week sequence, the class spent some time in role play and freeze framing events in the story to get the events clear and establish some sense of the characters of Dog, Cat and Mouse. Using the role play area, they wrote lists of jobs to be done in the beach hut and what they might need to pack if they were going to run away like Mouse. They wrote recipes for food using cheese and sardines and tended their own pots of herbs (bought by Abi).

In capturing ideas for their own narrative writing, the children chose which character they wanted to be and drew pictures of what they were doing the day before the story began. Abi modelled hot-seating the Mouse to practise and consolidate use of adjectives and the class discussed what they thought about the Mouse trying to run away. They talked about Dog and Cat and what they thought about their characters. In small group work, language about characterisation that had come up during class discussion was added to the children’s pictures. After Abi demonstrated the use of first person narrative, the children used their annotated pictures to plot their stories and as they began to write, they drafted their ideas through oral rehearsal. Throughout the writing they edited and redrafted with others in small group work. To finish off the sequence, the children recorded their opinions of the book and these were uploaded as a podcast available in the library alongside a display about Mini Grey’s books.

x Case study: early primary

Using the planning and teaching sequence (W4.3)

Planning

Rachel, who teaches 5 and 6 year olds, planned to use The First Slodge by Jeanne Willis and Jenni Desmond as the stimulus for a three-week teaching sequence using contemporary fiction. She identified the following objectives drawn from the national curriculum for English in England:

Word reading and spelling would be taught during explicit phonics sessions as the teaching sequence was early in the year.

Reading comprehension

Develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and understanding by:

• listening to and discussing stories at a level beyond that at which they can read independently
• discussing word meanings
• discussing the significance of the title and events
• making inferences on the basis of what is being said and done
• predicting what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far
• participating in discussion about what is read to them.

Handwriting would be taught during explicit handwriting sessions.

Writing composition

Write sentences by:

• saying out loud what they are going to write about
• composing a sentence orally before writing it
• sequencing sentences to form short narratives
• re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense.

Grammar and punctuation:

• understand what a sentence is: verb, noun or subject and punctuate
• leave spaces between words
• begin to punctuate sentences using a capital letter and a full stop
• use a capital letter for names of people, places, the days of the week, and the personal pronoun ‘I’.

Spoken language:

• articulate and justify answers and opinions
• give well-structured descriptions and narratives
• use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas
• speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English
• participate in discussions, role play. (Links to phonics, spelling and handwriting would be modelled as part of the writing process as well as through discrete teaching.)

Across the sequence of lessons, she planned the following opportunities for children to respond to the text in writing (pupil outcomes):

• thought bubbles (writing in role)
• predictions
• notes from one character to another (writing in role)
• character description: creating a character – design, draw, describe
• retelling a familiar tale (with a new character): plan through mapping (drawing); story structure (setting, character, problem, beginning and ending); sequencing sentences in order to tell a new story.

During the first phase of this teaching sequence, there is a greater focus on spoken language so this case study provides more detail of this phase with some examples of the teacher’s questioning.

Phase One: reading and investigation; becoming familiar with the text type

During the first week of the sequence, Rachel focused on reading comprehension (reading for meaning) as well as spoken language. Initially, the children looked at the title double page spread and the front matter, which shows the Slodge emerging from the green slime. Rachel read the opening sentences of the first double page spread:

In order to encourage speculating and hypothesising, she asked the children, ‘What is a Slodge?’ and as they gave answers:

she encouraged them to articulate their ideas in full sentences:

She then read the next double page spread from: ‘She saw the first sunrise’ to ‘“My star; my moon,” she said.’ And to allow for imaginative ideas she asked the children to make up more sentences about the Slodge, ‘What is she like? Where does she live? How do you know?’

Some of the children suggested:

Rachel selected sentences offered by the children that had easily identifiable nouns and verbs and wrote them on flipchart paper. First of all she chose sentences that began ‘The Slodge is…’ so that the class could talk about nouns before going on to talk about pronouns. She was careful not to talk about verbs as ‘doing’ or ‘action’ words because the verb the children had used most often was a form of the verb ‘to be’, which involves no action at all.She reminded the children that the verb ‘is’ tells you something about the person, using some of the children as examples: ‘Minna is a girl’; ‘Scott is a boy.’ They identified the names as nouns and ‘is’ as the verb.

Returning to the sentences they had composed about the Slodge, Rachel asked the class to talk in their pairs and decide on the nouns and verbs:

They were quickly able to identify ‘Slodge’ as a noun and ‘is’, ‘lives’ and ‘likes’ as verbs. Then Rachel asked, ‘Can you see any more things – nouns – in the sentences?’ and together the class found ‘blob’, ‘creature’, ‘lake’ and ‘moon’. While they had been discussing these, the teaching assistant, Nita, had cut up the sentences noted on the flipchart paper into separate words plus the full stop. In small groups, the children were asked to reassemble the sentences, making sure they used every piece of the jigsaw and when they were sure they had used them all, to make ‘human sentences’ where each child held up their word (or full stop) in the right order. To check that they made grammatical sense and were accurately demarcated, Rachel asked the class to read each group’s sentence aloud in turn.

Rachel shared the rest of the book with the class and in the following days they reread the text several times and discussed it, focusing on reading for inference about character and consolidating their knowledge of sentence structure. Rachel wanted the children to be able to give reasons for their answers and opinions, and articulate them in sentences so on the second reading, she stopped at the end of the third double page spread where the Slodge smelled the first flower and picked the first fruit and is shown singing and skipping. Rachel asked the children, ‘What does this spread tell us about the character? What do we know about the Slodge?’ She listed the children’s ideas, making sure that they gave reasons for their opinions. The following page says ‘As she slept, she dreamed’. To encourage the children to hypothesise, Rachel asked them what the Slodge might have dreamed about. Using the ‘character chair’ (a chair in the reading corner in which the person sitting in the chair becomes the character), Rachel modelled thinking aloud as the Slodge and volunteers took turns to voice the Slodge’s thoughts. In group work the children orally rehearsed sentences about what the Slodge’s dreams might have been and wrote them. Rachel provided them with the opening to their sentence, ‘I dreamed...’ to help them to articulate in full and grammatically correct sentences. Children’s writing was shared with the whole class, checking that they were grammatically correct.

In the following session, they recapped the story and read on to where somebody had taken a second bite of the fruit. Pausing briefly, Rachel asked the children, ‘Who might have taken that second bite? Why do you think that?’ and after some suggestions they read on to where the Slodge meets another Slodge and the words say ‘It was a terrible shock’. Rachel asked the children, ‘What does “a terrible shock” mean and why is it a terrible shock?’ The children realised that the Slodge had thought she was all alone and to meet another Slodge would have been a surprise. Rachel presented the children with four adjectives and asked, ‘How would you feel – angry, surprised, scared, happy…?’ The children worked with a partner to choose the most appropriate one and explain why. In role as the Slodge, Rachel demonstrated wondering to herself ‘Who is this? Did she eat MY fruit?’ and the children then worked in pairs in role as the two Slodges, each wondering aloud about the other Slodge. Rachel took children’s ideas and modelled writing thought bubbles, in first person, present tense, one by the first Slodge, and another by the second and the children wrote their own thought bubbles.  

In the following session, Rachel re-read the story to the page where the Slodges were fighting, inviting the children to speculate and infer by asking, ‘Why are they fighting?’ After some discussion, she read on to the end of the following double page spread where the fruit fell into the sea and the First Slodge jumped in after it. Rachel asked the children to predict what might happen next, using a sentence prompt ‘I think that…’ to support their sentence construction and to model possibilities and the children articulated, drew and wrote what they thought would happen next. They continued reading to where the Slodges escape from the Snawk, share the fruit and become friends. By this time it is clear that the second Slodge is a ‘he’ and to check their understanding, Rachel asked the children what they noticed about the part ‘“That’s my Slodge!” he said’. She read on to where the Slodges are watching the sunset together and asked the children how the Slodges felt, offering some words on a continuum: angry, hot, worried, relaxed, contented, happy. As she pointed to them, the children had to say whether she was ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ according to how accurately they thought the words described the way the Slodges were feeling. Rachel made thought bubbles and attached them to the picture of the two Slodges. Again, the children were invited to sit in the character chair and describe the Slodges' thoughts. Rachel took the children’s ideas and modelled composing thought bubble sentences in role as the Slodges. She then wondered aloud, ‘How will they let each other know what they’re thinking? I think they’ll write each other a note.’ Asking for suggestions about what the Slodge might say to her friend, Rachel modelled writing a note from the first Slodge to the second, and in groups the children wrote their own notes on special paper, choosing which Slodge they were going to write to. While undertaking shared writing and working with small groups to compose sentences, Rachel encouraged children to orally rehearse and hold sentences in their minds before writing. Reading the next double page spread, Rachel paused on:

asking the children to predict what was about to happen. They then read to the end and discussed what the picture suggested about how the Slodges’ world had changed. The children were encouraged to articulate their suggestions in full sentences and supported to do so where necessary.

At the end of this phase of the sequence, Rachel invited the children to identify what they had learned, offering sentences that began with ‘I …’:

• I understand what a sentence is.
• I can understand a character’s feelings.
• I can write in sentences to describe a character.
• I can predict what might happen.
• I can give reasons for my ideas.

Reviewing her own plans, Rachel was able to note that the children had been exposed to the planned reading comprehension objectives and most of the spoken language objectives.

Phase Two of the teaching sequence: capturing ideas, explicit teaching and modelling and discussion and experimentation

Rachel began the next phase of the teaching sequence by re-telling the whole story, inviting the children to join in. She modelled mapping the story, using story language: character, setting, problem and ending. After they had revisited the story and looked at the book again, she asked the children to identify their favourite parts of the story, and give reasons. The children wrote and illustrated sentences describing their favourite part of the story.

To teach about character, Rachel planned explicitly to teach about how adjectives enhance description, modelling drawing a Snawk and demonstrating a sentence:

She then labelled it with more adjectives that the children suggested: pointy teeth, big mouth, webbed feet. Together they gathered a list of possible adjectives and Rachel took the opportunity to revisit the children’s understanding of a noun. The children drew and described their own character, labelling it with adjectives. They then wrote sentences to describe their character and Rachel emphasised the importance of adjectives and grammatically correct sentences. During the rest of the week’s sessions, Rachel introduced the writing task: to write a story about a character: The First… Rachel chose a new character The Flig. Modelling the process throughout, Rachel used story language so that the children would understand all the ingredients of a story: characters, setting, beginning, problem, ending. She modelled telling a story about her character The Flig, mapping the story as she told it: ‘Once upon a slime…’. As she told the story, she followed the map of the original Slodge story. In groups the children drew and re-told the story.

At the end of this phase, the children were able to confirm:

• I can talk about my favourite part of a story.
• I can use adjectives to describe.
• I can describe a character.

Rachel noted that the class had covered the rest of the spoken language objectives, the grammar and punctuation objectives and some of the writing objectives.

Phase Three: shared and supported writing, making controlled writing choices in independent writing

In this final week of the sequence, Rachel wanted to ensure that the children could write sentences by:

• composing a sentence orally before writing it
• sequencing sentences to form short narratives
• re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense
• discussing what they have written with the teacher or other pupils.

Over the week’s sessions, she used shared, modelled and small group work to write a narrative based on The First Slodge, calling it The First ****. The narrative would be in the third person, past tense. She modelled how to transfer orally rehearsed sentences into writing, making key teaching points such as the application of phonic skills and knowledge. At regular intervals, she encouraged the children to reread small sections of their text (which she had previously identified) to check it made sense, supporting them in doing this. Throughout the week, she reinforced grammar teaching by taking sentences written by the children and sharing them or by playing human sentences to support the children in recognising elements of a sentence, for example the importance of determiners or consistent tenses. Children were asked to work in pairs to read their finished draft to a partner or teacher/ teaching assistant. In modelling, Rachel offered the children a possible story structure through displaying the map based on the original book. After the children had written their own stories, they were able to self-assess and confirm:

• I can write a story.
• I can read my writing to make sure it makes sense.
• I understand what a sentence is and punctuate it correctly.

Rachel was satisfied that the children had been exposed to all the objectives identified in her planning and that she had evidence for noting the range of the children’s achievements in spoken language through their predictions, speculations and opinions supported by reasons; through role play; writing in role; descriptions and short stories. She also had evidence of their ability to speak clearly in Standard English. Reading comprehension was evidenced through their responses to the text; their thought bubbles and the notes from Slodge to Slodge. For writing and grammar she had the children’s descriptions of their characters and their narrative based on the structure and events of the original.

Children's Books

Jeanne Willis, illustrated J. Desmond (2015) The First Slodge. Little Tiger Press. ISBN 9781848690394.

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In this interview transcript, Rachael describes how she plans a teaching sequence. (W4.4)