How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6-8

Sue Palmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136931246
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

Now in an updated second edition How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6-8 provides a range of practical suggestions for teaching non-fiction writing skills and linking them to children's learning across the entire curriculum. Providing a number of suggestions for teachers and putting emphasis on creative approaches to teaching children writing in diverse and innovative ways, it provides:

• techniques for using speaking and listening, drama and games to prepare for writing
• suggestions for the use of cross-curricular learning as a basis for writing
• planning frameworks and 'skeletons' to promote thinking skills
• information on key language features of non-fiction texts
• examples of non-fiction writing
• guidance on the process of creating writing from note-making.

With new hints and tips for teachers and suggestions for reflective practice, How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6-8 will equip teachers with all the skills and materials needed to create enthusiastic non-fiction writers in their primary classroom.

PART 1
The two horses model for cross-curricular writing

You can’t teach children to write before they can talk. It’s putting the cart before the horse.

It’s over a decade now since a teacher in Yorkshire uttered those words at one of my inservice courses. As I drove home that night I started wondering exactly how teachers could ensure that the ‘horse’ of talk was properly hitched up to draw the ‘cart’ of writing.

Eventually, after long conversations with many colleagues (especially my fellow literacy consultant Pie Corbett), I concluded that, in order to write, children need two sorts of talk:

• talk for learning – plenty of opportunities to use the simple spontaneous language of speech to ensure they understand the ideas and content they’re going to write about;

• talk for writing – opportunities to meet and internalise the relevant patterns of ‘literate language’, to help them turn that content into well-crafted sentences.

So children need not one but two ‘horses’ to draw the writing ‘cart’:

Figure 1.1 A teaching plan for cross-curricular literacy (simple form)

1.1
Talk for learning

Learn cross-curricular content

In order to understand the content of cross-curricular teaching, young children need – just as they have always needed – plenty of opportunities for talk. These are provided through the sort of good infant practice long recognized as valuable opportunities for activity and interaction, such as:

• learning corners and role-play areas, preferably linked to the subject-matter concerned, in which they can engage in imaginative play (this may sometimes be enhanced by adult involvement in the children’s play, expanding vocabulary and ideas);

• outings, excursions, visits and other opportunities to find out about the wider world through experience and talk to a range of adults;

• active engagement in learning whenever possible: making, doing, experimenting, learning through play;

• plenty of ‘props and prompts’ for learning – for instance, relevant items to look at, touch and talk about while you are teaching or sharing a text, and opportunities for ‘Show and Tell’;

• opportunities to ‘experience’ factual information with the teacher’s direction in drama lessons and through specific drama activities like hot-seating;

• using puppets to act out what they have learned, and to ‘speak through’ when explaining something (shy children often find it much easier to talk to a puppet or soft toy than to the class, and may also be able to respond on a puppet’s behalf when they find it difficult to speak up themselves);

• storytelling sessions – listening to adults telling stories, which can of course be true stories, and having opportunities to tell them themselves;

• responding to ideas through music, movement, art and craft.

Without such opportunities for active, motivating learning, young children are unlikely to develop the ideas, concepts, vocabulary and excitement about what they have learned that underpins good writing. With so much attention these days to ‘pencil and paper’ work it is sometimes tempting to think that this type of practice is a waste of valuable time. In fact, it is the bedrock of literacy.

Experience has shown that certain speaking and listening activities sit particularly comfortably with the different text types we use for cross-curricular writing, as shown in the boxes. These activities reflect the underlying structures of thought upon which the text types depend, and thus link to the planning skeletons described in the next section.

Recount content

Before writing recounts children should be clear on the details and sequence of the story through activities such as:

Retelling: select children to retell short sections of the story to the class. Or ask children in pairs to retell it to each other.

Role-play: ask children in pairs or groups to dramatize significant sections of the story, which they can then re-enact for the class.

Teacher in role: take on the role of a key character in the story yourself, and draw the class with you in re-enacting the story.

Puppetry: let children act out the story with puppets. They can improvise lines as they go, or one child can be narrator, telling the story while the puppets perform.

Freeze-frame: ask groups of children to create living tableaux of incidents in the story. Invite participants to step out of each tableau, and comment on what’s going on and their part in it.

Instruction content

The best way to familiarise oneself with the content of instructions is actually to carry out the process (or, if that’s not possible, watch it), talking it through as you go.

Partnered work: ask children to carry out the process (or watch it being carried out) in pairs, stopping after each stage to talk through exactly what has been done.

TV demonstration: ask pairs or groups to give a demonstration of the process, describing what they’re doing, as if they were the presenter on a TV programme. Others watch and question as necessary.

Running commentary: ask pairs or groups to mime the process (e.g. Road Safety Rules), or act it out with puppets, while others give a running commentary – like a road safety public service broadcast.

Barrier game: this is a good way for children to find out whether their instructions are clear enough. Give two children the equipment needed for an activity (e.g. a potato and some Mr Potato Head pieces), place a screen between them so neither can see what the other’s doing. One child decides on the activity and carries it out, giving instructions as s/he goes, so the other can mimic it. Remove the barrier and check how successful the instructions were.

Report content

Non-chronological reports involve accurate and clear description. The traditional ‘Show and Tell’ is the starting point for this, but you could also use activities like these:

Tell Mr Bear: Mr Bear knows absolutely nothing. Ask children in pairs to work out a clear description of the item/topic in question that will ensure his complete understanding.

Visiting alien: you play an alien visitor to Earth, totally ignorant about humans, their ways and possessions. Give individual children pictures of earth objects (e.g. a pillar box, a car, a bed) and ask them to explain their function to the alien. The rest of the group can chip in to help if necessary.

Brains Trust: when children have found out information on a topic, create a Brains Trust panel so each can give a brief talk to the class on their subject then answer questions.

TV documentary/newscast: as in the case study on the previous page – this could include commentary, interviews and, where appropriate, mini-dramatisations.

Barrier game: give one child a simple picture or artefact related to the topic and place a screen between them so the other child can’t see it. The first child must describe the item so that the second can draw it, or pick out a duplicate from a given selection. (When using barrier games to practise description, illustrated wrapping paper – e.g. paper with lots of pictures of cats – can be useful. Give the first child a cut-out of one cat, and the second a complete sheet to spot the appropriate cat.)

Another aspect of non-chronological report writing is the development of categorisation skills:

Sorting activities: most infant classrooms have games or activities requiring children to sort items into groups, e.g. model animals, coloured shapes, pictures of activities. Provide items of this sort related to cross-curricular work, ask pupils in pairs to sort them into groups and then explain the reasons behind their choices.

In the hoop: lay a number of hoops on the ground to represent different categories of information in your current project (e.g. fruit, dairy products, meat, vegetables). Ask each pupil to complete a sentence (e.g. ‘A ………… is a type of ………’) and go to stand in the correct hoop.

The corner game: choose four categories related to your topic, and make signs to put in the four corners of the hall to indicate the categories. On slips of paper write words or phrases, or draw pictures, which fit into one or other of the categories. Children take a slip and read it, then run around the hall until a given signal, such as a whistle, when they must rush to the appropriate corner. Each child (or selected children) then explain their presence in their particular ...

Table of contents

• Also available in the Writers’ Workshop Series:
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: teaching writing
• PART 1 The two horses model for cross-curricular writing
• PART 2 Case studies
• PART 3 Teaching materials
• PART 4 Appendices