Ros+Wilson

Ros Wilson stuff will appear here.

Wow! Well this page is going to be very, very full! Ros is an absolutely AMAZING lady...I recall her saying on the course I attended that we would all want to batter down our school doors & get going with the ideas she was going to cover...well, I may have begun the course feeling tired and jaded, but I can only say she was spot-on! I really DID want to get into school that weekend and get going! In a word inspirational!

Here's one to start off:

__Invisible Child__ - this was one idea that I had my doubts about but decided to try anyway. Create an invisible child, give them a name you wouldn't have in your school - on the training day, I think Ros's invisible child was Dwayne or somesuch. The child can sit by anyone in the class to boost their confidence especially in writing (amazingly he can sit by 6 people all at the same time & he doesn't seem to need a chair to do it!). He can 'own' children's writing errors - & they can 'edit' his work. My invisible pupil became a real character especially on the playtime - I can't tell you the stuff he used to get up to when he first arrived! The whole idea injected loads of fun into lessons & when we carried out our writing survey at the end of the year, so many children wrote really touchingly about how this character had helped their writing.
 * ~Sal26**

I've just dug out the children's Writing Survey feedback from the section about Marmaduke (our invisible friend!) - this is a summary of children's comments:



Sal - I would love to know more about this. How did you present this invisible friend to the children? How did they respond initially? Intrigued...think it has great potential, but not sure how one would go about implementing it! Thanks! **~Jog_on**

Hi Jog_on - well it was the Monday following Friday's course...I didn't know beforehand I was going to introduce Marmaduke - like I said, the whole thing was a bit out of my comfort zone, but when I said to the children I'd been on this lovely course about writing, suddenly I found myself saying 'and I've brought someone really special with me to meet you...a new class member!' I explained that he was actually very shy and so it probably wouldn't be very easy to see him but that he was a Year 5 pupil who had heard how fantastic the children were at writing and wondered whether they'd mind helping him out from time to time. One of the class pulled out a chair for him (which he needed less and less as time went on) & following playtime there were all kinds of stories about what he'd been up to! The children told our DHT all about him and explained about him to a supply teacher too. From then on it was mostly over to the children who were very creative about him!