Week
4: Writing
Readings
Winch
et al Chapter 14
Key points
· Writing is an expression of ideas, many different
formats of writing exist each with a different purpose.
· Teaching English and literacy typically involves
focusing on these common text-type structures:
o
Recount-
Retelling of an event, they typically include the who, what, where and when
of the story, the writer usually shows their opinion on the event through their
language and comments.
o
Procedure-
A
formative style of writing, describing a list of sequential steps to achieve a
directed goal and includes a list of materials required.
o
Information
Report- Presents information in a structured manner, the content
is structured into paragraphs with topic sentences and elaborative detail.
o
Explanation-
Used in scientific and technical field, this text-type is intended to explain
how and/or why certain phenomenon happen, the information is sequenced
logically following the format of cause and effect over a set time period.
o
Exposition-
A
form of text that presents an argument apposing or supporting an issue providing
evidence to demonstrate the authors reasoning.
Winch
et al Chapter 15
Key points
· An individual’s writing development is a
process that starts at birth and is on-going through their experiences with
range of multimodal texts.
· This process is called the writing continuum
and is categorised into the following phases:
o
Writing before school
o
Experimental/early writing
o
The developing writer
o
The proficient writer
·
Students should be exposed to writing of many
different forms of text before reaching school so that they become familiar at
a simplistic understanding level the function of writing, what texts look like
and what language is appropriate for what corresponding context.
·
Constructivist approaching writing, teachers
need to consider what language and understanding each different student comes
into the classroom with and how these understandings can be cognitively built
on.
·
Assessing students writing and progress is an
important part of ensuring development. Assessment is a means of the teacher monitoring
a student’s progress against a list of criteria, from this teachers can derive
how the results compare to the students previous performance, goals and their
peers.
Workshop
tasks and preparation discussion
As preparation for this
workshop we were directed to answer a number of questions from Winch et al and collect three different text-types
to discuss in class. The questions from Winch
et al were focused on a small insert of text written by a nine year old and
asked the text-type, grammar mistakes that exist, the tone and suggestions for
improvement. This exercise got us thinking about the importance of monitoring a
students work and the type of question that we need to think about when
examining work samples. Collecting three different text types and answering
questions about each was an excellent task, as it allowed us as teachers to
realise the existence of different text types in everyday life and in many
forms. This also facilitates connections with experiences outside the classroom
for students who do a similar or identical activity. Each group member brought in a variety of text-types making it easy to observe the relevance of
teaching about text types due to their commonplace in the world.