Let's Write

Activities to develop writing skills for 7–11 year olds

John Foster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317817031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Let's Write offers a wealth of suggestions for approaches to developing primary school pupils' writing skills that will capture the children's interest, while enabling them to improve their ability to express themselves in writing. It aims to meet the requirements of the new national curriculum for English at KS2 in a way that will develop the children's standard of writing by presenting activities that they will find enjoyable and stimulating.

Throughout the book, the emphasis is on providing activities that will engage the pupils in a discussion of how texts are structured, before producing their own writing. John Foster suggests a range of imaginative tasks that both literacy specialists and non-specialists will find useful in developing children' ability to write coherently and correctly.

Let's Write includes:

• 
  
  

• a clear explanation of the writing process with activities designed to improve pupils' drafting skills

• 
  
  

• examples of the different types of writing for pupils to analyse, which they can use as models for their own writing

• 
  
  

• a range of imaginative ideas for writing tasks, together with suggestions of curriculum opportunities for practising particular forms

• 
  
  

• writing challenges which can be used to stretch more able writers and thus to introduce differentiation by task, as well as by outcome

• 
  
  

• writing tips, for example, on sentence structure and paragraph structure, appropriate to the different types of writing

• 
  
  

• activities involving pupils in the assessment of their writing

• 
  
  

• a section on writing correctly, focussing on grammar, spelling and punctuation

• 
  
  

• a section containing games and activities designed to extend pupils' vocabulary.

Let's Write provides teachers with a lively collection of resources that will be welcomed by teachers and that will help to develop children's writing.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315818498-1

Let’s Write provides teachers of literacy with activities that are both stimulating and easy to use on all the different types of writing that pupils aged 7 to 11 are expected to do. For use in any primary classroom, this book will help develop pupils’ understanding of the features of particular types of writing and improve the quality of their writing.

The four main sections each focus on a particular type of writing — personal writing, persuasive writing, information writing and creative writing. Within each section there are separate chapters on different writing genres:

• Personal writing: autobiography, diaries, journals, letters, messages and recounts.
• Persuasive writing: advertisements, arguments, blurbs, letters expressing an opinion and reviews.
• Information writing: biographies, descriptions, directions, explanations, glossaries, instructions, invitations, newspaper reports, recipes, reports (non-chronological) and summaries.
• Creative writing: stories, play-scripts, poems, jokes, traditional tales and tongue-twisters.

It is envisaged that teachers will focus on a particular form as appropriate within their schemes of work. For example, they might focus on explanations when doing a science or geography topic, and use the chapter on recounts following a class visit. The chapter on blurbs can be used when focusing on children’s reading for pleasure, and that on reports when reporting a scientific experiment or writing a historical report, such as a report of how people lived in Elizabethan times. The majority of the suggestions for activities are aimed at years 5 and 6, although many of them can be adapted to make them suitable for years 3 and 4.

Each chapter offers sufficient ideas for one or more lessons on a particular form of writing and there are activity sheets, which can be either photocopied or put on the whiteboard. The activity sheets vary. Some offer models to be analysed, while others are designed to help pupils to plan and draft their writing. The aim is to enable children to identify the overall structure and shape of different texts and how they are organised and sequenced for the reader, so that they will write with coherence. The emphasis is on helping pupils to understand the features of particular forms by providing models for them to analyse and to give them practice at using the different forms.

Throughout the book there are a series of writing tips, such as how to write an opening sentence that will grab the reader’s attention, how to use alliteration and the use of powerful adjectives. There are also writing challenges for more able writers, and checklists to involve pupils in assessment of their writing. In addition, where appropriate, there are suggestions of curriculum opportunities for pupils to practise a particular form of writing.

There is an introductory section explaining the writing process, which pupils need to be aware of whenever they do an extended piece of writing. It is important that you explain the distinction between redrafting and proofreading and keep constantly reminding them what redrafting involves — thinking about the language, structure and content of their writing — and that this is different from proofreading, which involves checking the accuracy of the spelling and ensuring that there are no grammatical mistakes and that the punctuation is correct.

Within the final section ‘Writing correctly’ there are chapters on grammar, spelling and punctuation designed to be used as appropriate with individuals or groups to help them write correctly. These chapters can also be used to prepare pupils for the level 3–5 and the level 6 grammar, spelling and punctuation tests. They provide information and activities on:

• how to recognise, write and punctuate simple, compound and complex sentences;
• the parts of speech, including the difference between proper, common and abstract nouns, and examples of collective nouns;
• the various forms of verbs, such as the infinitive, tenses and active and passive voices;
• adjectives and how to form and use comparatives and superlatives;
• the different types of adverb — manner, time, frequency and place;
• personal, relative and possessive pronouns;
• how to use prepositions;
• what standard English is and common errors that occur due to dialect differences, such as the use of double negatives, ‘them’ instead of ‘those’ and ‘should of’ instead of ‘should have’;
• simple spelling rules and ways of remembering difficult words;
• how words are formed by adding prefixes and suffixes;
• how to use full stops and capital letters, commas, semi-colons, colons, question marks and exclamation marks;
• the difference between direct and indirect speech and how to punctuate speech;
• how contractions are made and the use of the apostrophe in contractions and to show possession.

The chapter ‘Vocabulary building’ includes games such as ‘What’s the word?’, activities involving finding synonyms and antonyms and alternatives to tired words.

The final chapter ‘Setting targets’ involves pupils in self-assessment of the development of their writing skills.

2 The writing process

DOI: 10.4324/9781315818498-2

It is important that you make children aware that whatever type of writing they are being asked to produce, the writing process is the same. Explain that it has a number of stages and write the stages on the board, as you explain them.

Stage 1: collecting ideas

Explain that this may involve doing research and making notes. It may involve brainstorming a topic or making a list of arguments.

This stage may also involve making a plan. It will depend on the purpose and type of writing as to whether the plan is detailed or merely an outline. It is important to stress that if a plan is made, you need to be flexible. Often, particularly in story-writing, significant ideas come to you as you write. So you need to be prepared to change your plan while you are drafting.

Stage 2: selecting ideas and writing the first draft

Explain that if you have been researching a topic or brainstorming ideas, you do not have to include everything that you thought of; rather, it is important to be selective.

This stage is often referred to as a ‘rough draft’. The term ‘rough’ suggests that the writer need not care too much about the draft and can approach it casually. Calling it a ‘rough draft’ creates the wrong impression. It is far better to refer to it as a first draft.

Stage 3: redrafting

A piece of writing may go through several drafts and children need to understand that the changes they make when redrafting are improvements rather than corrections. If they decide to change a word, for example, it is not because the initial word is ‘wrong’, but because the word that they have chosen instead is either more suitable and more accurate, is more powerful and effective, or has particular connotations.

Explain that redrafting involves thinking about the content, the organisation and structure of the piece and the language that is used.

Stage 4: proofreading

Discuss how this stage involves checking the grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Stage 5: publishing

Explain that this means producing the final version either by printing out a copy from the word processor or writing out a ‘fair copy’ by hand.

Part One Personal writing

3 Autobiographies

DOI: 10.4324/9781315818498-4

An autobiography is an account of a person’s life which is written by that person.

Explain that an autobiography is a type of personal writing in which you write about yourself and your life. The purpose of an autobiography is to tell your reader about the interesting things that have happened in your life and to describe your thoughts and feelings about your experiences.

Discuss how the audience for your autobiography can be not only your family and friends but also other people, such as children of your age in an overseas school with which your school is linked.

Collecting ideas

Ask individual students to collect ideas for their autobiographies by noting down a list of interesting things that have happened to them in their lives. Prompt them to think about things such as:

• where they have lived;
• things they have achieved;
• places they have visited;
• incidents that have occurred at home involving either themselves or other family members;
• significant moments in their lives.

Then invite them to share their lists with a partner. Alternatively, the pupils can each prepare a timeline of the significant events in their lives.

Encourage them to bring in any photographs they may have that were taken at significant moments in their lives or that show places of significance to them. You could get them to show the photos to a partner and to talk about them, before choosing one of the photographs and writing a paragraph about what is in the photo and why it is significant. The photograph and paragraph could be incorporated into a more detailed autobiography (see below).

Another way of getting students to think about important events in their lives is to introduce the idea of thinking about their lives ‘alphabiographically’. This involves going through the alphabet and seeing whether a word beginning with that letter sparks off a memory of a particular event. For example, ‘A’ might trigger a memory of an aunt, of appendicitis, of an accident or an aeroplane flight; ‘F’ might trigger a memory of being frightened, going fishing, playing football or of a particular friend; and so on. They could draft a paragraph about one of these memories for inclusion in their more detailed autobiographies.

Making a plan

Explain that if they are going to write in detail about themselves, they will need not only to make notes about what they want to include in their autobiography, but to structure their writing by making a plan.

Encourage them to make notes under different headings. Draw a spidergram on the whiteboard with examples of the type of headings they can use:

• My earliest memories
• Where I have lived
• My family
• My interests
• Me
• My schooldays
• A day I’ll never forget
• My hopes and ambitions
• A place I’ll always remember

When they have made their notes, they can use the headings to plan the order in which they are going to write about themselves and their lives. Explain that the order may depend on the audience for which they are writing. For example, if they were writing to introduce themselves to someone, they might start by writing about their age, describing their appearance and their interests. If they were writing their life story for a magazine and a more general audience, they might start by writing about their family or their earliest memories.

Encourage them to think about a more general audience and to plan the different sections they are going to include by drawing a flow chart.

The students can then draft their autobiographies in sections as if they were writing it for a magazine.

Writing tip: grabbing the audience’s attention

Talk about how important the first sentence of a piece of writing is and how, for example, you need to start an autobiographical piece with a sentence that will grab the reader’s attent...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The writing process
• Part One: Personal writing
• Part Two: Persuasive writing
• Part Three: Information writing
• Part Four: Creative writing
• Part Five: Writing correctly
• Appendix
• Index