Examples of
Children’s Work
DADWAVERS
Misty waves crashing on the crystal, blue sea. Peaking over the ledge, the mountain goat stared out to the horizon.
“Aaah, I’m going to die!” with his knees knocking and heart pounding.
High above, the terrified mountain goat, is a massive rock coming to squash him! Carefully, he jumped over to protect himself. Breathing heavily, the mountain goat sighed, but looked up to find that he was directly under the rock. For a few moments, it went quiet, then....BANG!!
What was that sound?
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he called for help, squashed under the gigantic boulder!
This amazing learner came to Mr B’s Tutoring needing some support with building her confidence with writing. She had some specific targets focusing on spelling, sentence starters, sentence construction and a variety of punctuation across KS2.
Over our first 4 weeks together, she picked a picture that captured her imagination, and I introduced her to DADWAVERS - courtesy of the Literacy Shed (amazing resource) This is a way of supporting children to vary their sentence starters (in red) which builds cohesion and a fluency with their writing. Alongside this, I introduced her to box dictation (dyslexia friendly spelling approach) and gave her some independent strategies with checking and editing her own spellings. We were both very proud of what she achieved - what an imagination!
This young man came to Mr B’s Tutoring needing support with writing and sentence construction. He has such a vivid imagination and vocabulary as you can see from the gripping narrative. This shows again how DADWAVERS can really support young writers give structure to their work and unleash their potential.
I have been so proud of this student, I can see a real improvement in his confidence. He has been continually saying “I don’t think that phrase is strong enough, let’s think of a better one,” and “That word just doesn’t sound right, how about....”
Creating Websites...
Throughout Block 2, we have had 3 children working on websites linked to subjects that really interest the students. One of the students has created a website that aims to support parents in making a judgement as to whether to allow children as young as 9 to play Fortnite. We conducted market research together, and used this to decide on the pages on the website. The page shown is all about the benefits of playing Fortnite for children.
Click for website
It is important to have a real purpose to your writing. This student has been working on a website that explains to parents all about the game “Fallguys” This student recommended this game to me for my youngest (Reubyn) to play with his friends. This website is aimed at parents of children in Key Stage One, and I will send this website to the parents in my sons class aiming to create some online gaming with his friends.
Click for website
This young student has a keen interest in Stranger Things and also CGI in films. We incorporated these two passions to create a website all about how CGI is used in Stranger Things. We discussed together what she already knew, and what we needed to find out. This was then linked to some home learning to prepare for the following session. We incorporated writing skills taught alongside the website being created, and these were used.
Click for website
This student decided to include information on what CGI is, and how it is different to VFX. She also explained how green screens and blue rooms are used. It is safe to say there was some co-teaching going on here - I learnt a lot!
The students also learnt how to link to other pages within the website, and some key fundamentals in website design such as colour schemes and fonts - while still allowing their artistic flair shine!
Although the other students cannot all work together, I still like them to feel connected. This is why we have a Mr B’s competition with prizes.
At the start of every session, we play Shut The Box. This is a fantastic game that teachers rapid mental arithmetic for numbers splits up to 12. This is an area of Maths I have seen even the most able not be fluent with.
Making Learning Fun...
These 2 games are super fun for spelling and thinking creatively. It is a great warm up at the start of the session, and again is super competitive!
Something else we like to play is darts. This is another great game that teaches children mental arithmetic of addition and subtraction using scaling, and also can link to column addition and subtraction in a real life context. Plus, it is also great fun!
