Ideas Communicated in Writing: Scaffolding Learning From 2.25
Indicators of Progress
Students write examples of the texts in both electronic and print form. The texts vary in length from several paragraphs for narratives and imaginative texts (such as a familiar event, a recent experience, a story they have heard or a video they have seen) to typically three to five paragraphs for factual, descriptive, instructional and persuasive texts. The texts contain the following characteristics:
- Each paragraph has two or three sentences that are sequenced in a logical order to develop its main idea, for example, the students write two or three sentences that refer to characters in a narrative and describe the events in an appropriate sequence.
- Appropriate nouns, adjectives and verbs have been selected by the writer, for example, to say how a horse moves, the writer uses gallops, trots, jumps and canters.
- The text elaborates its main idea or topic in the details it provides. Each paragraph deals with an aspect of the main idea; the writer begins to use paragraphs to separate ideas.
- Narrative texts begin to make explicit reference to the features of character, plot and setting.
- The texts combine a range of sentence forms and expanded sentences. Fluency and cohesion across sentences in each paragraph are achieved through the beginning use of connective terms.
Students show that they are beginning to distinguish between the following text-level ideas, the purpose of each type of text and how the information will be organised; they can write narratives in order to tell a story and to entertain, expository texts to teach and learn, persuasive texts to convince, personal narrative and autobiographical texts to record journal entries and reviews and summaries to convey a message more briefly. They can write in a variety of forms with awareness for different audiences and purposes. As well, they begin to show humour, descriptive language and visual elements to enhance their texts.
Teaching Strategies
The learning and teaching approach for writing is illustrated for students responding within the context of The Farm.
Organising phase
Establishing a purpose for the writing
Students write a recount of their excursion to a dairy farm. They identify what their recount will do.
Our recount will say:
- what we did and saw
- the new things we learnt about farms
- how we enjoyed the visit
- what things we found interesting.
Making decisions about the text type
Students make decisions about the form their writing will take by asking themselves:
- What form should my writing take?
- What will my finished attempt look like?
Students examine the writing outcomes of other students about the topic, for example, a poster showing their visit to the farm or a letter or post card to a friend describing their visit to the farm or a recount. Students can select with support the format that they might use and how they will prepare their knowledge for using or adopting this format for their writing.