Using Writing ModelsChoose a writing_models (RTF 6KB) to share with the class. eg. camp contexts:
School Journals: Select the language and text features that will be the focus for this model from the list of suggestions below, or others you may have already identified from your teaching programme and children's needs, eg:
The Confidence Course by Nellie Ison Shared ReadingIf copyright allows photocopy a copy of the writing model for each student.
Close readingStudents need to become familiar with different text forms and recognise that these have different structures. They need to become familiar with:
Non Fiction texts - Reading for Information Expose students to:
Through reading, talking, exploring, and experimenting students can present their findings in a variety of visual texts such as maps, time lines, flow charts, venn diagrams, as well as a range of written texts such as explanations, instructions, reports, recounts, arguments, Teachers will be able to integrate literacy learning with learning in other areas of the curriculum. Develop confidence and competence in students, encourage and give support, model, guide, share, reflect, to develop INDEPENDENCE. Teachers should plan a balance of the following approaches throughout the unit. Shared Reading - Guided Reading - Independent Reading - of selected, fiction or non-fiction texts, to demonstrate the ways structure assists the reader to gain information, using and discussing features such as title, table of contents, headings and subheadings, pictures and their captions, diagrams, index and glossary. Skills to develop through close reading of transactional texts: questioning, summarising, analysing, making inferences, reflecting, imagining, hypothesising, sequencing, classifying, clarifying, predicting, interpreting. Encourage students to find and list verbs, effective adjectives, explicit nouns, adverbs, similes and metaphors that help achieve meaning/feeling. Talk about sentence structure, punctuation. Throughout the reading and writing programme there should be teacher modelling and student activities to develop the skills and strategies in the use of dictionaries, thesauri, and atlases. |
Writing Focus Feature for the DayEach day focus on one particular feature for the writing session. Do not try to focus on too many features at once. It is best to have one main focus for the day or writing session that you keep returning to in the discussion, and just noting other features spontaneously in passing. Choose from a variety of possible language and text features. Select these on class and individual student needs, their next learning steps. Possible topics will present themselves as you rove the classroom during writing time, conference and talk with the writers, listen to sharing times, analyse writing models to use with the students, and take time to read and reflect on their writing books at the end of the day. Examples of possible language and text features for focus in personal recount writing:
Powerful Verbs
Linking Time Words
Personal Voice
Sentence Structures Use the language of sentences as they become more familiar with them, ie. simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, used in the National Exemplar Project Indicators. Choose a different sentence structure for your focus each day, eg. today we are going to see if we can write a compound sentence in our writing. Can you find one in the model? How do you know it is a compound sentence? Why has the writer used it here?
Figurative Language
Personal Pronouns
Inner monologue
Detailed Descriptions
Recount Structure
PURPOSE
TEXT FEATURES
LANGUAGE FEATURES
PERSONAL RECOUNTS
FACTUAL RECOUNT If this is new to students, give them a photocopied model of a written recount; making sure the model is a personal and not a factual recount. Highlight and label the parts that make up a recount, eg. first highlight the introductory paragraph one colour and label it introduction or orientation. Identify the features of the introduction. NB. personal recounts do not always adhere as closely to set text structures as factual recounts, but these give students good guides from which to springboard as their writing knowledge and skills grow. Do not let these planning structures inhibit students who already have a grasp of text structure from being creative writers.
Openings
Endings
Comparing speaking and writing Discuss: What happens when you write down an oral anecdote? When we write do we write exactly as we speak? Why not? What is the difference between spoken and written language? How can we show the tone of the voice? pauses? loudness? facial expressions? non-verbal language? (with graphic cues, eg. punctuation, bold print, italics, capital letters, fonts, paragraphing...) What did these features do for the audience when they listened? Why is it important to show these features in writing too? Model some examples using graphic cues. Find some examples of graphic cues in the writing model and talk about them, eg. why has the writer used these dots here? What do we call these? Where could you use them? |
Introducing language and text features:
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Published on: 06 Apr 2009