April Writing CPD in Pontian Cluster

Writing CPD

In Pontian we had another CPD in April.  The main topic was writing.  In an effort to assist our mentee's we decided to show them some theory on writing and include a few game/activity ideas that they could use in the classroom.

Here is Robynne showing the group what we were planning on doing.  We feel that telling the group what is expected of them is very beneficial to accomplishing the goals of the CPD and will help the mentee's understand where we are going with everything.


 Here is a sentence building exercise that the teachers enjoyed very much.  Hopefully they will be able to use this to assist the students with learning how to build proper sentences.

 At station one they had to pull out a paper from the envelope of their color and that would be the start of their sentence

 Once they knew the subject they had to go to station two and get a verb to use in their sentence

 Station three was a little more difficult.  They had to come up with a finish to their sentence but it had to be more than just a noun.  They had to finish with the answer to one of the 5W1H questions

 All the groups came up with some very good sentences and they all had fun doing the activity.

Jason did an activity where the groups had to add punctuation and spaces to a paragraph that had none.  The time limit was short so they had to work as a team to get it done on time.  They all managed to do it and only a few mistakes were made.

Jason's second game was called "Silly Sentences".  Each group was given a set of color coded word cards.  Each color fit a place on a proper sentence.  All they had to do for the first two rounds was build a grammatically correct sentence.  Round three required them to make their own words for each section of the sentence.  It was a great exercise that they will all be able to use in the classroom.

John gave a twenty minute lecture on how to make story writing easier to teach and easier for the students to do.  He had some great visual aides and all the teachers were able to take home a copy of the aides.  Unfortunately John didn't have enough time to get to his second activity, but the first one was beneficial so all was well.

All in all, Robynne ran a really nice writing CPD and feedback from some of the teachers was very positive.  

Next month John will be running a speaking CPD and I'm sure it will be a rewarding experience for everyone involved.