Here's a quick thread of how I used ChatGPT today to help me scaffold and model a small independent piece of writing. We are doing our writing around King Kong and today the children were re-telling the events on the below page in their own words with a bit more zoosh. Yesterday, we had already spent about 30 mins annotating a blown up version of the text in pairs and thinking about extra vocabulary we could use, vocabulary changes we could make any appropriate adverbial or prepositional phrases and what characters think/feel/see/hear etc

This might become a short thread, as it's too much for one tweet, PLUS, I only tried this for a couple of weeks at the end of last year, but it was working so I'm carrying it on and hopefully it continues to.

I have a few children, who can decode fluently, but struggle in WCR... There are lots of strategies employed here - they are heard read regularly by adults, they're focused on in reading lessons etc etc.

One of the strategies often employed to help with the specific WCR lessons would be to pre-read the text with them. This is extremely useful, but

Quite often my TA pre-reads our WCR text (bar class novel) with a few chn, but on Friday she wasn't in. I didn't have time to do it with said chn so had to think on my feet. What I tried instead was running my text through Chat GPT & asking it to (sorry too big for one tweet) Asking it to rewrite it for a struggling reader. First two pics attached are the text we tackled as a whole class, the third pic is what it produced for me. I asked these three chn to independently read that text when they came in and then had a quick chat to them about it and...

I don't have a blog anymore, but I've had one brewing in my head for a bit around my thought processes when planning a non-fiction reading lesson, and if I don't spew it out at some point it may shatter my eyeballs out, so load in (or log out) for a fairly long thread. Generally we look at non-fiction in reading on tues/weds/thurs - not always as sometimes we might have something else to look at, but these days this is mostly what we read on these days. Mon and Fri we study our class novel in depth. These sessions are always 45 minutes long.

If you've done my reading training or read my blog (RIP) in the last couple of years, you'll know what the Tues/Weds/Thurs sessions of Whole Class Reading that I teach were always designed to link together, ie three poems, three texts on WW2 and so forth. Sorry this is a thread The idea was to build little pockets of knowledge up on different topics, genres and styles of writing etc. It worked really well and we still do it sometimes and I still advocate it. But my thinking has definitely changed recently and I think it's better now.

Often get asked how we fit in an hour's writing and 45 mins WCR in every day (plus 15 mins protected time for class novel) - generally the week looks like this. Usually try and skim 5 mins off both afternoon subjects too so the kids can have an afternoon play break. Be kind to me pls I know timetables are a minefield and u will probably shout at me that you have 25 assemblies a day.

I p much start back in school full time this week, but over the last year and a bit I’ve worked with and in *a lot* of schools to look at reading I wanna touch on and talk about some common threads I think we have to think about as a profession that we possibly waste time doing. Perhaps waste time is the wrong verbiage for all of them, but I think it is worth dissecting them and thinking about them. I’m sure you may disagree on some and I’m sure some schools do some very well. Regardless, working with leaders they have popped up repeatedly.

A small thread on live marking:

I've found, as many of us have, that marking in the moment has by far the most impact and reduces after-school workload. Me and any additional adults always circulating. But teachers say they find it hard, and it's almost always for same reason... It's almost always because all the struggling children are put together one one table, usually with almost constant support from an adult.

This is, most often, a table of 'learned helplessness'. They don't do anything without the approval or support of an adult.

My festive gift to you all is a thread of the worst Christmas dinners I’ve ever seen. Merry Christmas one and all. We’ll start with this one, which I’ve named ‘is that rice?’ I’m calling this one ‘a bit of a pickle’.

Authors: if you could sum up your biggest/best/most useful editing tip for children in one tweet, what would it be? Hoping for plenty of responses to help children and teachers alike so please RT! #MakingWriters @samdaunt @samdaunt @MaryAliceEvans @PiersTorday @whatSFSaid @AJ_Wils @doyle_cat @camphalfblood @malorieblackman @edgechristopher @mossmontmomery @RossAuthor @rosswelford @neilhimself @MitchAuthor @sophieinspace @Eloisejwilliams @peterbunzl @frankcottrell_b @afharrold @vashti_hardy @LizPichon