Literacy Professional Learning Resource

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VELS Level 4 – Writing Strategies for all VELS Domains

Writing strategies can be found in the English Continuum.

These strategies will support students to build their speaking and listening, reading and writing knowledge and skills to support their learning in all domains of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS).

Following are some examples that can be adapted to a single VELS domain or for programs that have multiple domains to support students in meeting the literacy demands of their learning.

The examples provide a structure for supporting students to use writing to learn and to communicate. Students write for a range of purposes, using a variety of forms and genres in a range of text types in both print and electronic form.

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Structured process for writing

Use the structured process for writing to support student learning. Discuss and describe each step in the process as it applies for the VELS domains.

Planning

Describe their action plan for writing, and the actions they will use to achieve their goals or purposes for writing

Organising

Selectively use a variety of strategies for writing according to the given purposes. These include:

  • idea generation and collation strategies
  • orientation strategies
  • idea organisation strategies, for example, brainstorming and semantic mapping (including computer and graphic organisers in planning and collating knowledge for writing different text types)
  • strategies for narrowing or expanding a topic prior to drafting

Organise the ideas into main and subordinate and sequence.

Composing

Select and use specific vocabulary according to the topic of the writing and its purpose. Use drafting strategies in which students:

  • use the ideas and perspectives generated to write a first draft
  • elaborate initial ideas and identify subordinate ideas
  • focus on developing ideas, details and organising them.

Students can express and clarify their thoughts, feelings and values through writing using a range of sentence and paragraph writing strategies.

Revising

  • use several drafts in a systematic, organised way to lead to a final product
  • use revising strategies such as rereading the draft to check that there is consistency of meaning and main ideas, language use and style, and modify the draft accordingly.

Proof reading and publishing

Use editing strategies to check the use of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalisation; students use several resources such as a dictionary, computer and style guides. Use publishing strategies such as:

  • selecting a format for publication appropriate for the audience (for example, a letter, a poster, an essay, a report)
  • using technology to support the publishing process.

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Writing strategies for different types of texts

Support students to write different text types by explicitly teaching them to include the following features in their writing. Their texts should:

  • have a clear and consistent focus on the main ideas and develop a logical position or argument – the writing indicates the use of analysis, with the ideas organised in a logical way
  • provide subordinate ideas that elaborate to enhance or support the main ideas,
  • synthesise ideas effectively both across sentences in a paragraph and between paragraphs, and cite information where necessary
  • identify and be written for a specific audience, for example, a student’s friends, their teacher, themselves and use form, details, organisation, and vocabulary to suit the readership
  • address a range of purposes across topic areas and discriminate between essential, supporting and irrelevant information
  • show an awareness of the audience through the strategic selection of content, structure and language choices relevant to the topic to convey the intended meaning in an appropriate way for the audience
  • may use analogy, simile, or metaphors to express the ideas more easily and use figurative language and sound patterns in an expanded way
  • use a variety of forms and genres such as pamphlets, poems, memos, graphs, or demographic tables, essays, research reports and news articles.

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Purposes for writing

Support students to understand the various reasons for writing. The types of texts that students write include:

  • longer imaginative and narrative texts that maintain their plot and setting throughout and through their selective use of language, elicit the intended mood and characterisation
  • informative writing that shows clear and appropriate prioritising of main and subordinate ideas and begins to use topic sentences to summarise paragraphs
  • written explanations that frequently show the use of relevant and technical vocabulary provide relevant information and are objective and focused on the topic
  • persuasive texts that support their position or the argument with some objective opinions and logical detail. Opinions are organised in a logical way and use terms such as however or on the other hand to compare and contrast ideas.

Each of these texts which students write have a style that has been selected to match their purpose. It expresses and clarifies the writer’s thoughts, feelings and values, and shows multiple interpretations of a topic, where appropriate.

Student begin to use imagery such as similes and metaphors to convey meaning. They can vary the style of sentence forms and organisation to communicate their intended meaning clearly and show evidence of using the conventions strategically and selectively.

For example, they use compound sentences, subordinate and embedded clauses, direct-voice versus indirect-voice statements, questions versus tag questions (that is, the sentence is more like a statement than a question. For example, “It’s beautiful weather, isn’t it?”), exclamations and commands.

Students can use paragraphing techniques to communicate and sequence their main ideas such as the topic sentence and indexing. They can also relate ideas in writing. They:

  • define
  • list
  • describe
  • discuss
  • explain
  • apply
  • analyse
  • distinguish
  • compare
  • contrast
  • predict
  • select.

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Conventions of writing and spelling

Support students to improve their writing by explicitly teaching them to recognise and use:

  • a variety of sentence forms to achieve their purpose and display appropriate grammatical conventions including tense and subject–verb agreement
  • paragraphs and other text features (for example, heading and subheadings or section headings in narratives) to organise the main ideas and subordinate ideas
  • punctuation appropriately including the use of colons and semi-colons
  • graphics, photographs and artwork to support the written message.

Reference

English Developmental Continuum P–10 (Victorian Department of Education, 2006)