Student's Sharing and Assessing Their Learning

Children need to know what they are learning, why they are learning it and how they will know if they have learn't it. Today we were learning how to make our writing interesting by making our sentences descriptive. 

We were putting ourselves in someone else's shoes by writing from the perspective of children whose journey to school is dangerous, based on some fascinating pictures we had found on the internet. 

To make our sentences descriptive we were using the 'magic' formula of describing and activating the noun in the sentence. After some teacher modelling, expectation setting and then a chance to have a go on their own, with guidance from me, there were some very interesting sentences being developed. 

A chance to share these sentences was done in our lesson wrap up where the children sat in pairs and read their sentences out to each other actively listening for enjoyment and of course that the writer had used the 'magic formula'. This sharing and assessing of their writing is a very important part of the process of children becoming responsible for their own learning. Children who identified that they had not met the objective spent some time remedying this. When students know they have met the expectation for the lesson they feel successful and motivated to reinvest in learning again next time. 

To enrich this process, the teacher gives their feedback based on the learning intention adding to the success the writer feels when acknowledged for their achievement and progress.