Writing in the classroom should be reflective of the writing individuals do in their daily lives. Typically, we create written texts with a specific purpose and for an intended audience. Show
Whatever the purpose, or whoever the intended audience,
composing texts involves a sequenced process from the generation of initial ideas to the realisation of a finished product. Approaches such as the genre approach using the teaching and learning cycle, or the more process-oriented approach of the writing workshop, incorporate teaching about the writing process as students compose texts. As noted by Christie (2016, n.p.), “As teachers and students together initiate writing activities in school, so too they engage in writing processes, shaping meanings, working towards purposes and creating different texts, or ‘products’”. In the composition of considered pieces of writing that we intend others to read, this writing process usually takes the form of:
It is this writing process—from planning to publication—that provides a template for thinking about supporting students as writers in the classroom.
Examples of student's work. Rationale for a focus on the writing processThe recognition of the writing process engages students in writing for specific personal or social purposes and alerts students to the conscious and considered creation of texts. It focuses their attention, even in the very early years of school, on the need to be attentive to authorial and secretarial aspects of writing, defined by Daffern and Mackenzie (2015) as embracing: Authorial
Secretarial
Early research around embedding the writing process into classroom practice (Graves, 1994; Calkins, 1994) highlights high levels of student engagement with writing when their interests are legitimated and their topic choices are honoured. Instituting a writing classroom that involves a writing process of planning, drafting or composing, revising or editing, and publishing, actively involves students in purposeful writing around which both their authorial and secretarial skills and understandings can develop. Supporting EAL/D learners in the writing processEAL/D students begin learning English at different points in their lives. Depending on their prior schooling experience, an EAL/D learner might need explicit instruction in either one or both authorial and secretarial aspects of writing. The type of scaffolding needed to support EAL/D students' writing is influenced by three factors:
The following strategies are useful for early years EAL/D students who are new to formal written literacy or who are unfamiliar with the Latin script. Some of these can also be modified for older EAL/D students with limited English language proficiency and/or limited formal learning.
The Australian Institute for Teaching School Leadership (AITSL) website shows a teacher modelling sentence structure to a Year 1 class with a number of EAL/D learners. Explicit teaching and feedbackWhen teachers plan to be pro-active and interventionist in terms of supporting students’ writing, their role throughout the writing process can take the following forms: 1. Planning and rehearsing: “Getting started” on a piece of writing can be a challenge for many students, so the teacher’s role in supporting students at this planning stage might involve:
For EAL/D students, planning and rehearsing can be enhanced by integrating their home languages, English and a range of multimodal modes:
Where students use visual images to map out the sequence of their text, they use the images to gradually build the language needed to encode the meaning they represent. Students do this by focusing on different aspects of the picture and producing the parts of speech necessary to form complete sentences. With support, students label:
Students combine these three elements to produce sentences about each image, e.g. My friend plays at my house. Students might begin by writing one sentence for each image and move to writing a short paragraph about each image. If students cannot annotate the image in English, they need to be given this vocabulary from a peer, the teacher or with the assistance of a bilingual dictionary. 2. Drafting or composing: Students need support for recording ideas in an initial draft. Teacher modelling or joint text construction can be very supportive for students at this point. This might involve:
It is useful for EAL/D students to also have a model or structure to prompt their writing during the drafting or composing stage. Some examples include using:
Students’ home languages can also support fluent writing. For example, if students are ‘stuck’ on a word or phrase, they can note down the meaning or a synonym in their home language, and come back later to check or translate it. They can also write an initial version of the text in their home language to 'get their ideas down' and then focus on their expression once the content is set. Writing a longer text can place a high cognitive load on EAL/D students as they make connections and draw on new knowledge of content, language and text. It may be appropriate to break the writing task into smaller chunks. For example, students write, workshop and receive feedback on just the introductory stage of the text before proceeding with the next stage. This has the advantage of clarifying correct language use in one stage, before it is practised and reinforced throughout the text. ABC Education Literacy Mini LessonsThe Department collaborated with ABC Education to create a series of videos. All 16 mini lessons based on content from the Literacy Teaching Toolkit are available on the ABC Education literacy mini lessons page. 3. Revising: As individuals, with classroom peers and with the teacher (incidentally or at a more formal conference), students need to be actively rereading over written drafts with a focus on meaning and form. Important considerations here are whether the text makes sense, ideas are presented clearly and sequentially. Actions might include:
For EAL/D students, significant language learning occurs during the revising and editing process. This includes learning to distinguish between social English choices and literate or academic language choices (e.g. We found out about how clouds form versus Our investigations into cloud formation showed ...). Since EAL/D students are still learning English, their written work may contain many grammatical and/or spelling errors and non-standard forms. Teachers and learners need to be strategic in their revision strategies and not attempt to correct or modify everything. For example, if the target text is a biography, past tense is a crucial grammatical feature. Focusing students' attention on using past tense forms of verbs they have learnt in their writing of a biography would be a worthwhile starting point. There may be scope for teachers to address related features such as word choice (e.g. repeated use of 'went') at the same time. While correcting students’ grammar and spelling is important, EAL/D learners also need support and feedback around content and making meaning. The revision stage could also be viewed as an opportunity to focus solely on the ideas of the written piece such as the quality of arguments, and leave the language component to the editing phase. As with all learners, developing strategies and tools for revising writing will be useful in the long term. These can include:
4. Editing: Students edit their texts focusing on conventions (spelling and punctuation) to ensure they are incorporated correctly and in ways that will assist the reader. The teacher’s role in supporting students to edit their writing might be:
Helping EAL/D students develop editing strategies will support them in future writing tasks. Useful strategies might include:
For more information, see: The writing workshop 5. Publishing: The final form of a written piece might be a digital publication, a paper-based text, an audio-recording or podcast, among many options. Rich models of published texts serve as exemplar texts that students might strive to emulate. So, the teacher’s role here can be around:
Publishing EAL/D students’ writing is an opportunity to engage a wider audience by:
If students are writing for a bilingual audience, or for other EAL/D learners, some useful features of a publication might include:
The students’ role in the writing processThe writing classroom needs to be a supportive environment for students to:
So, while mindfulness of an audience necessitates attention to conventions around grammar, spelling and punctuation, students must feel they have licence to learn through a process of trial and error. Newkirk and Kittle (2013), reflecting on the legacy of Donald Graves, note that a successful writing classroom is one where students feel a sense of:
Students need to know that their writing choices will be respected, and that feedback will be offered respectfully and sensitively. In addition to these rights, they also need to know that they have responsibilities in what they write—and that sensitivity to the reality of student diversity needs to be carefully considered as students embark on writing that will entertain, inform and engage. GrammarIn this video, the teacher explicitly demonstrates how to expand noun groups to include pre and post modification of the noun. This example shows a whole group mini lesson and differentiated small group learning. ReferencesCalkins, L.M. (1994). The art of teaching writing. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Christie, F. (2016). Writing development as a necessary dimension of language and literacy education. PETAA Project 40 essay 3 Daffern, T. & Mackenzie, N. (2015). Building strong writers: creating a balance between the authorial and secretarial elements of writing. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, (1), 23-32. Graves, D.H. (1994). A fresh look at writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Newkirk, T & Kittle, P., Eds. (2013). Children want to write: Donald Graves and the revolution in children’s writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. What are the benefits of having students write in response to text?Responding to text in writing has been shown to support comprehension, for both students in general and students who are weaker readers or writers in particular. This applies across expository and narrative texts as well as in content areas such as science and social studies (Graham & Hebert, 2011).
What are the benefits of having students write in response to text select all that apply quizlet?What are the benefits of having students write in response to text? It prompts students to reflect on what they have learned. -AND- It enables students to connect ideas. -AND- It allows students to paraphrase ideas in their own words.
Which is a best practice for helping beginning writers learn and use different parts of speech in their writing quizlet?Which is a best practice for helping beginning writers learn and use different parts of speech in their writing? Give students question words (e.g., who, what, how) to associate with each element or part of speech.
In which grade should students begin using transitional words in their writing?Basic Transition Words for 3rd Graders
In 3rd grade, students work to build off the transition words they learned in 2nd grade by incorporating transitional phrases like "with this in mind" and "even though." They also explore some additional transition word groups.
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