Reflection – Week 1: Monday – 19.07.

2021
Today’s PD with Lisa Burman (being the second out of three sessions) was brilliant. Lisa spent time
focussing on how to provide children with nudges that are within their Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD), by providing suggestions for children within their bookmaking/ writer’s
workshop that nudge them into thinking about ways of conveying new and different meanings. Such
nudges include but are not limited to using varying illustrations such as zoom in/out, movement
lines, comparison illustrations, off the page illustrations, flaps and thinking about page orientation.
Nudges within writing include using captions, ordering text in different ways (dot points, text in
boxes, use of tick boxes), captions, big and bold, onomatopoeia, blurbs, thought and speech
bubbles, page numbers and contents page. Lisa also provided us with a variety of templates that can
support us in assessing children capabilities that can be used to track progress, child’s ability on their
own, child’s ability with teacher’s help (within ZPD)), and what potential nudges could be given to
stretch children’s learning and growing ability to show meaning. I used one of Lisa’s templates as a
basis to create my own template that I hope to implement in days to come that will track children’s
progress as young writers.

I will use these templates when I start to conference with the children. Conferencing is when a
teacher or educator sit down with a child and the child reads their book, the teacher or the educator
is using good listening skills and then after the book is read, the teacher or educator gives a
nudge/suggestion that is something the child could consider using in their book or in future books.
The question is then asked, do you think you’d like to have a go to using this technique in your book?
If the child says no, it is okay that they do not want to include a new technique, but it is important
that new understandings and ways of meaning are gained by children.

Writing Conference:
1. Research: listening with all our senses.
- book, writer’s processes, evidence of thinking like a writer
- identity strengths
- identity possible nudges/ teaching points

2. Decide which nudge will best help the child in their developing skills.

3. Give feedback- as a writer/ reader.

- I notice…
- React as the audience, ‘oh, that’s scary’ etc.

4. Teach- a new strategy or device the child could use.

- I’ve noticed this child has done this. Why don’t you ask how they did it?
- How could you show the audience what you were thinking? You could add a thought
bubble- in this book Aaron Blabey etc…

I liked the way Lisa shared how she uses different texts to show examples to children. So, instead of
suggesting to a child that they can use thought bubbles to show what a character in their book is
thinking and just showing the child on a separate piece of paper how to draw a thought bubble, Lisa
was sharing how she always has a relevant ‘stack’ that she refers to. A stack is a number of books
that are used regularly for reference- these can include professionally published books, the
educator’s own made books or other children’s book too. These books are then used to show
children how other authors use these strategies. By doing this, the teacher can say, ‘Aaron Blabey
used a technique that you could also use’, by using the author/illustrator’s name shows the child
that the professional author/illustrator is just a person like them, and that they too can also use the
same techniques to show new meaning because they are also authors and illustrators who make
books. By using a variety of published books shows the child and reinforces the idea that anyone can
write books, even children and teachers.