Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

Write This Way: Structured lessons and activities for reluctant young writers by Gavin Reid, Jenn Clark and Michelle McIntosh is out now. with the theme of the written work. Now you are a director, not a teacher. For many of us, the thought of teaching writing can be just as overwhelming as our pupils sometimes find the task of it. Make it less challenging for everyone by helping out with that ‘getting started’ part: give them a first paragraph, line or even just a word. And remember that pre-writing discussion (with music, of course), is a must. Make it easy We know writing is a complex activity, and that many subskills are involved; but the same is true for playing football, cricket or tennis. If you’ve ever taught any of those sports, you’ll know you have to teach them bit by bit, so each skill is practised – and that a real game or two makes it exciting. The same is true of teaching writing. Joan Sedita, an American literacy specialist, has borrowed ‘The Reading Strands’ analogy and applied it to the art of writing. She identifies five individual strands of writing that must be woven together in order to create a proficient writer. They are: critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft and transcription ( tinyurl.com/ tp-WritingStrands ). Using this framework, we can think of writing skills in achievable chunks. It’s not possible to teach children these skills all at once. Instead, start from an established baseline. You can then add each writing element sequentially, so that the skills build on one another and strengthen subsequent ones as they go. For example, in Year 1 to Year 3 the focus could be on expanding and elaborating sentences with building blocks of grammar, punctuation, word choice and spelling. Over and over When you approach your writing practice in this way, you are creating a strong foundation on which teachers further up the school can build and elaborate. By using a framework that elucidates all the different skills involved in writing, teachers can be confident in their own understanding and not feel as though they are underperforming or missing elements out. Something that is often missing from the art of teaching writing is the explicit demonstration of skills. Just as in sport you would always demonstrate a skill you were teaching, you need to do this for writing too. When children are exposed to writing tasks that are explained and modelled clearly, and where they receive plenty of practice, review time and feedback, they learn and experience first-hand the art of good writing. They will feel confident in their writing, even as the skills required become increasingly more complex and demanding over their school career. Good thinking = good writing The teaching of writing should never be mechanical and boring. Learners of all ages, when given the opportunity to explore writing skills through fun, interactive activities, usually become engaged in the process and excited with the idea of becoming an author. There are many examples of good resources online and in print that will enable you to run fun writing activities that can be applied in a class or small group setting or even in a one-to-one situation (for example, plazoom.com ) . Just as a learner can become overloaded if they have many things to consider at once, so too can the teacher. Plan, prepare, teach, assess... sometimes everything required of us can keep us from teaching a subject to the standard we want. So use all the resources available to you, so that you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. This will allow you to focus instead on creating the right environment, with the right approach, to teach something as highly complex as writing. T E ACH I NG T E CHN I QUE S QUICK OFF THE BLOCKS At the beginning of each session, provide a list of key words relating to the topic and discuss this vocabulary with the pupils. Help pupils to create personal word banks. It’s a good idea to make sure there is a definition next to each word, to ensure that the children can use it appropriately. Give children different categories of words to use, such as descriptive words, names, places, ‘feeling’ words, and so on. Use a structure such as the KWL grid: What do I know already? What do I want to know? What did I learn ? This information can be recorded in three columns, one per question. Give guidelines for writing, particularly on the use of paragraph headings and around structuring a beginning, main part and conclusion for each piece. Provide plenty of examples of introductions and conclusions. Variety is important, so give the children a range of exercises that will prompt writing in different ways. Ask pupils to compile a list of questions they would ask if they were interviewing a fictional character on TV. Encourage children to draw a character or scene from a story and write phrases from the text on or around their drawings. Get them to write thought bubbles for characters at key moments in a story where the author hasn’t provided any dialogue. Create an ‘emotions scale’ to show the possible range of reactions characters might have at certain specific points in the story (for example, angry, happy, sad, excited). “Use all the resources available so you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel” www.teachwire.net | 55