Burst and Bubbles

 

Burst and bubbles presentation

All of the students I work with have Neurodevelopmental
disorders, some of whom have complex communication
needs and limited experiences of generating language, 

My inquiry was to  focus on How can we use the Key
Competencies to help motivate students with complex
needs and see a shift in their writing. 

Writing presents many challenges to my students with
complex needs. To develop writing skills they need to learn
to generate an idea, to think about language, think about the
words, spelling and controlling their writing tool ,etc. and
eventually students need to be able to do all of these, within
the one task, to become writers.  

At Sommerville we have been fortunate enough to have
Dr Sally Clendon take professional development over the last
few years. As a result of Sally Clendon's guidance as well as
strong routines and behavior support, I was able to implement a
range of strategies and have noticed a difference in my student’s
writing skills. 

All my students are ORS funded and are working within level one

of the curriculum.

(If I used the traditional NZ  writing assessments they would be well
below their curriculum level for writing)

 

To assess my students, I  used the developmental writing scale

for beginner writers developed (Sturm, cali, Nelson and

Staskowski, 2012) adapted by Jane Farrall to see how my

students progressed.

 

 The scale has 14 levels and overall gives us information about

how to help a student move to the next level.

I used three different interventions for my students and was able
to see an overall improvement in their writing

One of the interventions was the use positive behaviour support

Due to writing being so complex, Motivating my students to write was
very challenging. I found that beginning a task and getting students to
stay focused is an ongoing issue. Students require lots of support
and motivation to just get started. I used a range of visuals.
All my students responded well to the FIRST-THEN visual Eg,
First writing -then choosing, This strategy worked well and
helped motivate them, as they knew they would get a reward as
soon as they completed their writing

Another intervention was-  Writing for real reasons

My students are not motivated to write, they need to know why they
must write, the purpose of writing and how is it going to help them.
(Eg talking about their weekend)

After looking at the research by Dr Sally Clendon, I encouraged
whanau to be involved. Each week they sent in a range of photos
from the weekend. These were events that the student could relate to,
they have had the experience and were more eager to share. 

It is authentic and students are more motivated. 

I noticed that the more involvement we had from whanua, the better
the outcomes.

For those whanua that were not involved we used Photos from daily
school activities.

The other intervention that was really useful, was 

Colourful semantics

The approach is used in stages and helps children develop
language and vocabulary in addition to grammatical structure.

Colourful semantics is an approach created by Alison Bryan. It is
aimed at helping children to develop their grammar but it is rooted in
the meaning of words (semantics).

It encourages students to use wider vocabulary and make longer
sentences

By using these three different interventions with my students I
could see the difference in their writing. They were wanting to
write more and were more motivated.

Students needed explicit teaching, the use of a device for writing
was not a motivator.

Out of my six target students Two students moved up three level,
Two moved up two levels and two moved up one level.

For the students and their whanau this was massive as
previously most of them made no attempt to write at all.

Summary evidence of key shifts

Evaluation of student shifts

Just to recap

The target group of students I am focused on, are at all different levels. They have many different challenges that I considered. I will used the developmental writing scale for beginner writers developed (Sturm, cali, Nelson and Staskowski, 2012) adapted by Jane Farrall (see previous blog post) to see how my students progressed.

Meet my target students  

• Student 1 (DH) - Is six years old and has Down Syndrome. He has also been diagnosed with moderate ASD, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss, hearing aid in both ears, Hypermetropia-wears glasses and dysphasia. Student1 is in a Year one class and has significant language delays.  He is mostly non verbal, in a one on one sessions he may share an experience about his weekend. He is not motivated to write due to his delayed language and  poor fine motor skills. He is just beginning to learn how to use a device. 

• Student 2 (SH) - Is eight years old. He also has Down Syndrome and moderate ASD. He has hearing loss in one ear, he has one hearing aid and wear glasses. He is in a Year 4 class and has significant language delays. He will sometimes attempt to write a recount about his weekend. He requires lots of prompting and motivation to get started with his writing. A reward system and a range of targeted resources is needed in order for him to complete a writing task. His lacks of motivation is due to his poor fine motor control and his language delays.

• Student 3 (RY)- Is eight years old and he has Autism, English is second language and he has Global developmental delays. He is in a Year four class. He has significant language delays and is not motivated to write. With support and targeted resources he will attempt a simple sentence about an experience he had. He still misses out the little words and always starts his sentence with 'His name'. He is confident on a device, but due to language delays, he needs constant reassurance before he can record a word.

• Student 4 (EP)- Is 11 years old and has Down Syndrome, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss,  and dysphasia. She has significant language delays and is in a Year six class. She needs lots of  motivated to write and she will only write if she had an experience. Due to her poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult. She is only starting to learn how to write on a device.

• Student 5 (LL)- Is in a year eight class and has intellectual disability. She has extremely low adaptive functioning, serious Receptive and Expressive Language disorder and probable Neurological Disorder. Due to poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult and is not motivated to write. She is aware of the fact the she is working at a much lower level than her peers. Even though she is very confident on a device, she requires a range of prompts and supports in order to construct a simple sentence.

My students struggle to focus for extended periods of time. They are not very motivated to write and require lots of motivation to get started and stay on task. 

Kindly click on the title link below to view my summary

Click here- Evaluation of interventions

Questions we can ask about writing

As teachers , here are some questions we can ask about the way we teach writing.

Writing is a complex task, involving ideas, language, words, spelling and transcribing or selecting letters. We need to teach all of these skills – and eventually students need to be able to do all of these, within the one task, to become writers.

Overall guidelines

• Do you have time scheduled for an independent writing block every day?
• Are your students using a pencil or alternative writing tool that allows them to focus on the cognitive aspects of writing e.g. alphabet board, flip chart, keyboard, eye gaze system, iPad and app, computer, pen or pencil?
• Does their writing tool include access to all 26 letters of the alphabet?
• Do your students have real reasons for writing? (and remember – writing never involves copying and tracing; writing involves thinking of ideas, language, words AND transcribing)
• Do you model writing to your classroom each time before you ask them to write?
• Do you have a time for writer’s chair so that students can share their writing with others?

• For emergent students
• Are you giving your students lot of opportunities to learn the function of writing without focusing on the form e.g. following through on notes handed to you, writing yourself reminders and then using them, writing a morning message?
• Do they have daily opportunities to write without standards using a writing tool with access to all 26 letters?
• When they have finished writing do you say “now let me show you how I would write it” and model writing rather than interrupting them during the writing task or putting demands on their writing?
• Are you offering them a range of writing tasks, such as writing about personal experiences, high interest topics, classroom topics, letter writing, signing in?
• Are you following through on writing tasks e.g. posting letters?
• Do you have a daily or weekly shared writing activity, such as predictable chart writing?

Writing (with an alphabet chart, teacher scribes)

💚Student signing in→

For conventional students

• Do you focus your modelling of writing on different aspects of the writing task each day e.g. using the word wall, using capitals, using punctuation, thinking of ideas, thinking of your audience in planning writing, using different sorts of vocabulary, etc.?
• Are you modelling aspects of writing for a while before you expect your students to start using them?
• Are you including free writing so that students learn to self-select in this block?
• Have you done a chart of topics “we all know about” with your class as ideas for free writing?
• Are you using the prompt “tell me more about that” to get students to extend their writing?
• Are you teaching students to edit writing, starting with teaching them to edit your writing and then transitioning to their own?
• Are you using editing checklists as students start self-editing e.g. “do my sentences have capitals and punctuation, do all my sentences relate to the topic”?
• Are you encouraging your students to publish?

Research about development writing scale

Developmental writing scale

All my students are ORS funded and are working within level one of the curriculum.

To assess where my students are now, I am going to use the development writing scale below.
This writing scale has been really helpful. Dr Sally Clendon and Jane Farrall recommends this writing scale for students with complex needs. The scale has 14 levels and overall gives us information about how to help a student move to the next level.