English Developmental Continuum P–10 – Writing
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Writing Strategy Scaffolding learning from 1.25
Indicators of Progress
- Students plan aloud, with pictures, or in writing the key ideas, and use the planning ideas to write a first draft.
- Students say how planning and reading over what they have written helps them.
- Students read what they have written either to themselves or to others to see if it makes sense or ‘sounds right’, and, if necessary, add to or change the text.
- Students read their writing to others.
- Students form letters more accurately and write more legibly.
- Students say how writing is useful and how it helps them, and suggest activities in which they could use writing.
- Students check for spelling and punctuation with help from the teacher.
- Students transfer what they know about writing from one context to another, for example, they write about a birthday party using different text types or write a brief message for different people they know well.
Teaching Strategies
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of Mini-beasts.
Organising phase
Awareness of writing strategies
Students, in small groups, read aloud the writing outcomes of other students. They respond to the question "What did these students have to do to make their minibeast report?" A video of students showing them talking about what actions they needed to do can help here. Students would be able to listen and reflect on their articulated actions for planning the report, as well as listening to the actions described by their peers.
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of Mini-beasts.
Composing phase
Recording their ideas
Students work on putting their ideas about their minibeast into sentences. They:
- arrange the word cards into sentences, say each sentence and then write it. Students could record each sentence on cassette tape, listen to what they said and then write it.
- draw each sentence idea as a sequence of pictures and then write the sentence to match the picture.
Modelling and reinforcing self-instructional strategies
Students learn to use self-instructional strategies to guide them in this. Then ask themselves:
- What is the first important idea I want to say? How will I say it? What ideas go with it?
- What is the second important idea? What ideas go with it?
- How will I start the writing? What do I want to tell the reader first? How will I tell the reader about the main idea of the passage?
- How will I finish off the writing?
- What is the main idea in each paragraph?
Students decide whether it would be useful to include supportive drawings or computer graphics in their text about their minibeast.