Tuesday Week 2

Today we continued with our writing of cinquain poems. I am feeling more confident working with the Solo Taxonomy. As I continue to read more about it, I realise that this cognitive measure is multi-levelled. The rubrics that are constructed can be for the range of thinking for a specific learning intention or for types of thinking, moving from lower order thinking strategies such as define and describe to higher order thinking.
We are also now using the collaboratively constructed rubrics to direct and extend our thinking for a specific learning intention that also includes a range of difficulty within that learning intention.
To make this a little clearer, today we used a different pattern to structure our writing of a cinquain poem. Yesterday we used the pattern
Line 1: 1 word
Line 2: 2 words
Line 3: 3 words
Line 4: 4 words
Line 5: 1 word
We established the rubric prior to starting this activity. We have also had a focus on adjectives this week in language, to extend our vocabulary and colour writing.
Today our cinquian pattern required extensive use of adjectives. The pattern was
Line 1: Noun
Line 2: Two adjectives
Line 3: Three - ing words
Line 4: a phrase of 4 words
Line 5: One adjective describing the noun

This structure proved to be a lot more challenging than yesterday because the children found that their vocabulary was limited and they could not think of appropriate words.
Our strategy was to introduce a brainstorm box. The topic was chosen and they then used the adjective brainstorm box to think of as many describing words that they could that applied to their topic.
On the first attempt, we found that many of the adjectives chosen were not always appropriate and that they did not help to paint the desired picture in the readers mind.
The children said that we needed to change the rubric. They felt now that the Relational level would require an additional criteria. They said that instead of just saying that adjectives needed to be added, that the adjectives had to be appropriate in creating a desired picture.
The children also realised that the poem could be built up using words that they new and then by using an online Thesaurus, they could find many other words which were appropriate for their writing.
I loved the writing done by Claudia because she started off and her writing was at at the Multistuctural phase. We then had a chat about WTN ( where to next ) and she went away and worked on the same poem. She used the brainstorm box, the online thesaurus and tried to include alliteration as well- and she ended up with a beautiful piece of writing - at the Extended Abstract phase.
The whole process of writing, assessing where you are, deciding what you could do to improve and then working on the same piece of writing is so empowering and allows the children to attain a level of success while at the same time giving them the opportunity to direct their learning process.
Here is an example of Claudia's work today.


Today we also worked on the Multistructural thinking strategy of Comparing and Contrasting in SOSE. We are going to use this strategy as we continue with our Inquiry on Sustainable Friendships so today we had a go at comparing and contrasting.
The children worked in pairs.They had to sit in their chairs knee to knee. They had a Venn diagram template. The aspect to compare and contrast was Appearance and Features.
We discussed the words Compare and Contrast. They already knew that compare was the same as common. We also came up with the words similar. From this they worked out what Contrast meant. They then had five minutes to complete the task. There was no talking- just careful looking.
We then came together and they shared their thinking.
Questions that were posed were:
What would your Venn diagram look like if you did this activity with another partner?
Where else in our present learning could we use this kind of thinking or where this kind of thinking would be useful?
Where would we use this kind of thinking out of school?
Here are some samples of their work and their answers to these question.