From the beginning of the chapter Felix has discovered Zelda and him finding Zelda has been quite shocking because Zelda’s parents had passed away and so the loss began. With food and drink and patience all running out at the same time, also such as Felix running out of justification for terrible events, and Felix losing energy, too, Felix has joined a line of Jews. The chapter ends with Felix walking along side people losing [amended to ‘who had lost’] everything they have.

Teacher: What could the Nazis not have taken off the Jews?

Keisha: They didn’t steal their lives yet! They also can’t steal what’s in your mind, head or heart. (They can’t steal abstract nouns, e.g. belief, kindness etc.)

Teacher: Beautifully constructed answer.

Madesha, year 1 (age 6)

Rhiannon, a student teacher, made these observations as she carried out a writing miscue analysis. Madesha achieves well and sees herself as a writer, so her teacher wants to make sure she is being stretched. After carrying out a full miscue analysis, Rhiannon decided to focus on two areas for improvement – writing behaviour and the process of writing since Madesha has a tendency to be more concerned about presentation and would benefit from becoming more attentive in editing her work.

Writing behaviour

Madesha is an able and extremely assured writer who derives pleasure from the process of writing both in school and at home. She has a preference for writing fairy tales at home but observations show that she can engage effectively with a range of genres. Presentation is a significant aspect of the writing process for Madesha who explains that she enjoys extended writing time as this gives her the opportunity to do ‘posh writing that looks really good’. The perception that written work needs to ‘look really good’ may be impacting adversely on Madesha’s willingness to edit and improve her writing due to the adverse effect that changes may have on presentation. Work is completed in a hardback book that children retain throughout their school career; the notion that this writing is special, clearly resonates with Madesha and is a motivating factor. There is an element of competition evident as she seeks to write more than her peers and openly shares her progress, which outstrips that of most other children.

Possible future action

Reinforce the value of all writing to avoid perceptions that all work needs to be perfect. Explain that all writers go through a process of refinement and to improve their work and consistently model this during input. Give Madesha opportunities to contribute to improvements during shared writing. Emphasise quality over speed/quantity of writing. Build editing time into the lesson part way through writing so that editing is not foregone at the expense of a desire to complete the writing process.

Process of writing

Madesha used her own planning (boxing-up) to support the sequencing of her recount, in addition to referring to classroom displays for support with spelling etc. She applies her phonic knowledge well – segmenting to spell unknown words, but has a preference for spelling independently. No support was sought from any of the adults in the room. Madesha made comparatively rapid progress, writing a total of 113 words in approximately one hour. She was very focused and engaged throughout the task stopping only once, voluntarily, to assist the child next to her to sequence her recount.

When asked to stop writing, Madesha ignored her teacher and continued – her haste to complete the recount impacting negatively upon the quality of the content. The final sentences of her writing include the word ‘and’ six times. When given the opportunity to edit her work, Madesha added a small number of full stops.

Possible future action

Model the process of editing for improvement. During written work encourage Madesha to read her writing out loud highlighting pauses etc. and discussing use of full stops to improve the flow of the text. Ensure that memory aids in the form of planning through whole class discussion, independent boxing-up with words or pictures is maintained during future learning as these strategies support and encourage independent working whilst reducing the demands on working memory – making it possible to focus on other aspects of the writing. Allow time to complete work if the child would like to (even at break), given the possible frustration that must be experienced when time to complete writing is denied.

When carrying out a writing miscue analysis it is not necessary to cover all the aspects of writing. Selecting specific areas for improvement can be most effective.  Rhiannon has identified some key points to focus on to move Madesha’s writing forward and has also noted some useful teaching points for teaching writing with the whole class.