Learning at Schools 2012- 10+ways to raise achievement in literacy with Jill Hammond

The key message in this session was MOTIVATION. In any area of learning children must have a stimuli, something that will motivate their learning. If it is writing they need to have an audience otherwise what is the point? With an audience comes feedback and with feedback comes improved writing.
So often we tell our students how to present their work but Jill posed the challenge of expressing themselves in a way that interests them. That makes sense but I also think they need to have a certain level of understanding in all areas of writing to be able to deliver their message in the best possible way.
One tool that Jill introduced me too was Etherpad. This is a good collaborative tool for writing and will be great to use on my reluctant writers. It reminds me of Google docs but is probably more child friendly. Students can then work together on a piece at the same time or one could be writing and the other buddy could be editing it as they write. When it comes to editing using track changes (in word) can be a useful tool as it gives the students ownership and credit for their hard work as it is improved.
She also spoke about using wordle to highlight to children how frequently they use words such as 'and' or 'then.' I can see this being a powerful tool as you often point out to students how often they use these words but you wonder how much they take it on board, but if they understand how a wordle works and realise that the bigger the word the more often you have used it in your writing it may make them think twice about using them next time.
Another tool she touched on was using powerpoint and using the action button to create a story that has numerous endings. This could be a fun reading/writing activity that requires students to think at a higher level in each creating a different ending for the one story. Later in the year I will keep this in mind to try as a collaborative task with my top reading group to extend their understanding of what a good book needs.
When looking at motivation I loved the idea of Lulu.com that Kevin Honeycutt introduced us to a publishing tool where you can actually purchase the children's work. How cool would it feel to be a 7-8-year-old and be a published author. I can see how students would then take more pride in their proofreading/editing phase.