Ideas Communicated in Writing: Scaffolding Learning From 0.5
Indicators of Progress
- Students write about personally significant events and topics. Their attempts contain letters, and two or more letters may be used to represent a word. Their writing is often accompanied by pictures or scribbles to convey their intended meaning. The students talk about what they write and show that they are aware that: (1) speech can be written by being recorded in symbols; (2) writing is used to convey ideas, feelings and information; and (3) writing a text usually has a beginning and an end.
- They are aware that people write for various purposes, for example, they can: (1) identify labels, signs and captions in their classroom and say what they do; (2) recognise and write at least part of their name and the names of others in their class; (3) identify written stories and explain that they tell a story; and (4) begin to develop a writing vocabulary of high-frequency words.
- They attempt to write in a range of contexts including on a card, in a note or in an alphabet book. They discuss the purposes for writing in each case and the ways in which they use writing.
Teaching Strategies
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of Pets.
Organising phase
Building Oral Language Knowledge
The students have read some Broadband A and B picture books that describe familiar animals such as Two Little Chicks by Jose Almeida and Farm Animals by Morgan McClatchey, both in the First Readers series and published by Macmillan Educational.
Interpreting Words and Pictures
After reading each book the children say:
- what each book is about, It is about two chickens and a fox.
- what tells us the story, It has pictures and words. The words tell us the names of the chicks and the fox.
Establishing a purpose for writing
In the classroom are photographs of some students with their pets, for example, Ann is holding her white cat, Khalid is leading his black dog, Maisa is patting her kitten, Jack is feeding his bird and Sam is holding his gold fish bowl. They decide to write a class book about their pets. The book will tell their families about the pets their friends have . To begin, they decide the questions their story might answer. Who has a dog? What is its name? What colour is it?
Awareness of writing strategies
Students re-read the texts and say what they will need for their book. They respond to the question “What did the writers have to do to make their book?" They drew pictures of the animals. They wrote about each picture.
Strategic Questioning and cueing
The teacher can ask: What sort of pet do you have Tom? Tom is encouraged to answer in a sentence: I have a brown dog. What is his name? His name is Boxer.
|
Pet |
Colour |
Pet’s name |
Child’s name |
|
fish |
gold |
Glug |
Sam |
|
cat |
white |
Cuddles |
Ann |
|
dog |
brown |
Boxer |
Khalid |
|
rabbit |
white |
Bugs |
Maisa |
|
bird |
yellow |
Tweety |
Jack |
|
kitten |
grey |
Smokey |
Angelo |
The students are guided to read each word. They can be cued to use the first one or two letters of each word to read it. As they read each word they can point to the picture that it matches.
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of Pets.
Composing Phase
Articulating and rehearsing what they want to write
Students say sentences for the key words on each page in the planning book/s. The teacher records the sentences as the students say them. They read these sentences aloud. The students can select some of the words the teacher has written from general word reading lists they have in the classroom. The general list of words could be as follows:
|
is |
a |
and |
not |
are |
I |
for |
they |
|
has |
at |
on |
can |
here |
will |
come |
went |
|
the |
go |
see |
this |
me |
he |
you |
big |
|
called |
children |
like |
school |
car |
she |
said |
little |
|
his |
to |
no |
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of Pets.
Learning Consolidation Phase
Reviewing the value of writing
Students think about how writing about “Pets” helped them:
- It helped them remember the names of their friends’ pets.
- It showed their parents what they were learning at school.
- It told their parents about their friends’ pets.
- It was nice to read their own text.