Strategies that can be used to develop student writing skills.

• Electronic read arounds
• Graffiti board
• Other teaching strategies
• Data chart
• Cognitive organisers
• Gathering grid
• Dictogloss
• Concept maps
• Brainstorm
• KWL or KWHL

Electronic read arounds

This strategy provides students with feedback on their writing during the drafting stage.

For more information see:

Department of Education, Tasmania, Teaching Ideas and Units - Teaching Strategies – Electronic Read-Arounds

Graffiti board

A Graffiti Board involves students responding to a topic, key question, illustrations, quote or comment by recording words, phrases, drawings or pictures. Usually the graffiti board is large pieces of paper pinned to the classroom walls or on classroom tables.

Graffiti boards support student to:

    - select the best means to share their ideas and thoughts
    - build upon other students’ ideas or thoughts
    - use think time before recording their ideas
    - be creative in their responses
    - record their prior knowledge before reading/writing a text.

Other teaching strategies

Possible strategies to build content knowledge and skills to locate, extract and organise information for text creation: Those in bold are expanded below.

See:

VELS level 4 – Genre teaching and learning cycle for writing

Data chart

Data charts are a visual organisational note-taking tool that can be used by individuals, partners or groups of students to take notes. They are an effective way for students to organise information and help students generate meaningful questions on which to focus their reading.

See:

VELS level 4 – Teaching reading using the Four Resources Model: Text using.

Cognitive organisers

Cognitive organisers are also known as graphic organisers.  The organisers are visual communication tools that use visual symbols to express ideas and concepts and to convey meaning. A graphic organiser often depicts the relationships between facts, terms and ideas within a learning task.

For a list of graphics organisers see:

Prep to Year 10 Assessment – Assessment Tools: Graphic organisers.

Gathering grid

Gathering grid is a teaching strategy to help students make distinctions between similar ideas, people, events and places. The students collect information and present in a gathering grid. From the information in the grid the students write paragraphs describing the similarities and the differences.

Download an example:

Space gathering grid 

Dictogloss

Dictogloss is a teaching strategy that involves the student listening to a text read aloud, recording key words and recreating the text in a small group.

For more information see:

Department of Education, Tasmania, Teaching Ideas and Units - Teaching Strategies – Dictogloss 

Concept maps

Concept maps show relationships between ideas or concepts. Concept maps can be used to:

• identify students' prior knowledge and understanding
• summarise concepts
• organise information.

Beginning with the central idea or theme in a middle box students then consider four to five components or sub ideas to this theme. Teachers could ask students to concept map a story they are writing.

• The central box contains the title of the story.
• Each of the outlying boxes could comprise components such as:
  
  o characters
  o plot
  o beginning
  o middle
  o climax.

From each of these outlying squares students make brief notes about what will happen in their story. ‘

See also:

Brainstorming under VELS support materials: Teaching and Learning Resource 

Brainstorm

Brainstorming is an individual and collaborative process which is used to generate a large number of ideas and encourage creative thinking.

See also:

Brainstorming under VELS support materials: Teaching and Learning Resource 

KWL or KWHL

KWL – Know? Want to know? What did I Learn?

KWHL – Know? Want to know? How will I find out? What did I Learn?

This is a tool used to inform teachers of the knowledge and interest level of their students at the start of a topic or unit and to help assess their learning at the completion.

See:

VELS level 4 – Assessment to support literacy learning

For more information and a diagram see:

K-W-L-H under VELS support materials: Teaching and Learning Resource