Structuring Descriptive Writing Sessions for CE1 Students

Extract

[...] In other classes, students work in level groups, which could be interesting to set up descriptive writing sessions, to be able to support each group according to their needs. For example, after the collective discussion time, the group of more advanced students could directly write their five sentences, while the group of students with more difficulties could have a text with gaps to complete with words identified during the discussion on the image at the beginning of the session. This would allow individualizing the work of students and thus their learning path, which would enable me to manage the diversity of school levels of my CE1 students, as explained by Philippe Meirieu5. [...]

[...] During descriptive writing sessions in CE1, some students struggle to structure their ideas before writing Presentation of a concern related to planning (according to the 5 foci of Goigoux) CONCERN: During descriptive writing sessions in CE1, some students struggle to structure their ideas before writing. They also lack vocabulary. This difficulty is reflected in disorganized texts, significant omissions, or blocks when faced with the task. How to best help the students?) I. Description of the situation The presented session is a writing production session in a CE1 class in a French school abroad. Students work on a descriptive writing activity based on the observation of an image representing a scene of life. [...]

[...] Filling in the sheet with only key words or even with drawings will allow students to no longer be blocked by the difficulty of constructing sentences directly, or to be blocked by a lack of French vocabulary. Next, the second difficulty of the students lies in their lack of French vocabulary. After discussing with other teachers, and thanks to Bakhtine's contributions3, who explains that the Verbal interactions in groups promote the co-construction of knowledge, it seems that taking more time to discuss at the beginning of the session with students about the image they see would allow us to guide them more, question them, about the characters, their actions and the place of the story. [...]

[...] These observations lead me to pose the following question: How to structure the planning phase of this activity to help students organize their ideas in a coherent manner, overcome their blocks and gain autonomy, while responding to the diversity of levels within the class? II. Analysis In the first place, this situation leads me to identify the difficulties and therefore the needs of the students. They have difficulties in organizing their thoughts and writing, it is therefore necessary to think of tools to help them structure their ideas. According to Piaget1, children need support, visual tools, etc. [...]