3H Term 1 Writing Sessions

Wednesdays (ESL session with Ms Illiadis) and Thursdays

Persuasive Writing with a Grammar Focus

Outcomes and Indicators
WS2.9 Drafts, revises, proofreads and publishes wellstructured texts that are more demanding in terms of topic, audience and written language features.
uses other texts as models for aspects of writing such as text organisation, grouping of information under headings identifies key words and phrases contributes to joint text-construction activities structures text types in appropriate stages expresses a point of view in writing with some supporting arguments writes for a chosen audience selects relevant information to use in own writing

WS2.10 Produces texts clearly, effectively and accurately, using the sentence structure, grammatical features and punctuation conventions of the text type.
builds word families in preparation for writing combines clauses by using a variety of conjunctions, eg when, because uses conjunctions to construct cause-effect relationships uses modal verbs and adverbs in text types to indicate shades of meaning, eg possibility, probability, obligation identifies theme and beginning focus of clause and discusses how choice of theme affects meaning

WS1.11 Uses knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, common letter patterns and a range of strategies to spell familiar and unfamiliar words.
spells high frequency words correctly in own writing uses known letter patterns when attempting to spell unknown words identifies possible spelling errors in own writing, eg by circling or underlining doubtful words deletes or adds words, adds information and rereads work to clarify meaning self-corrects words that do not look right

WS2.13 Discusses how own texts are adjusted to relate to different readers, how they develop to subject matter and how they serve a wide variety of purposes.
understands purpose and stages of the organisation of texts compares the features of two different texts and talks about how these differences are related to the purpose lists a number of topics for writing talks about research as a way of building up a topic

WS2.14 Discusses how own texts have been structured to achieve their purpose and the grammatical features characteristic of the various text types used.
recognises and discusses the organisational structure of a range of literary and factual texts recognises the subject, verb and object of a clause recognises theme of clauses (beginning focus for information) recognises common errors in writing such as lack of agreement between subject and verb, eg he done it

Links Base the expositions on Deltora Quest, HSIE and PD/H/PE topics.

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Teaching and Learning Experiences

Introduction to 2013 & 3H get to know you tasks Play a get to know you game- I am.... I have.... I like.... My favourite.... Students then write a series of statements about themselves. The class then plays a guessing game with the statements to determine which student is which based on what theyve said about themselves.

Reflection and Register

Students liked the guess who element of the task. Good way to introduce the class.

Students write a recount about their holidays, focusing on the personal statements and opinion about the events in their recount. Chinese New Year The class reads and views the Chinese Zodiac legend http://www.topmarks.co.uk/chinesenewyear/zodiacstory.aspx Discuss the story and the main themes/ideas of the story. Students then write their own version of the story, writing their own legend of how the Chinese Zodiac was formed.

Most used the same format as the legend. Others changed it entirely and made it their own.

Lana Howlett CPS 3H Writing Sessions Program Term 1 2013

4 & 5

Exposition Introduction Childrens Lives at Risk (Road Safety)- IWB exposition resource Go through the notebook resource discussing what an exposition is and watch the clip. What type of text is this? Why did the author write it? Who is the audience? What is the topic? What is the authors point of view? What are the arguments? Discuss the structure and highlight what each element of the structure is for. Students then arrange the different parts of the text in the correct order using a blank proforma. Revisit the text and discuss the language used. Use IWB resource and complete grammar exercises as a class on the IWB. Identify if there is any specific language that is particular to each part of the structure eg modal verbs and conjunctions and link to what they learnt with the IWB grammar activities. Students are given their own copy of the text and then highlight each stage of the exposition, words/phrases that introduce each stage, modal verbs and connectives. Conjunctions Discuss the different types of conjunctions and their purpose (joining two sentences/clauses). State the difference between conjunctions and connectives. Students are each given different conjunctions on cards. Two other students each hold a card with a simple sentence on it. Students holding the conjunctions take it in turns to join the two sentences. Students explain the meaning of the two sentences when joined and discuss any need for slight changes of words in order to join the two sentences. Students complete a cloze passage with the conjunctions removed from the exposition Childrens Lives at Risk. Teacher provides different levelled cloze passages to cater for the range of abilities within the class. James uses simple sentences. Conjunctions continued Discuss the different types of conjunctions: causal, time place, manner, concessional/conditional, additional. Show examples. Students complete a series of tasks relating to conjunctions written on cards. Cards are drawn randomly and students write an appropriate conjunction. When students have five words, answers are compared and verified, eg Question: A conjunction indicating how often. Answer: whenever Students then write sentences using the different conjunctions. *Have they used the conjunctions correctly? Khaled and Zoe matches given conjunctions with their type. James works on sight words, including simple conjunctions such as because, but, also etc. Expositions Remind students of last lesson and the structure of an exposition. IWB resource. Jointly construct a fourth argument to add to the Childrens Lives at Risk exposition. Discuss how to structure each argument.

IWB resource is interactive. Good initiation into an exposition. Need to use it as an example of a text that can be made into a better piece of writing but adding better developed arguments.

Most have a good understanding of time connectives and basic conjunctions. All can identify them in a text, but still need practise using them, especially how to use conjunctions within sentences.

7 & 8

Students then write their own additional argument, focusing on the elaboration of their idea through the 3 Es Elaboration Examples Evidence. *Assess in order to guide what is needed in follow up activities.

Students like the 3Es concept, but need more work on building an argument effectively.

James, Khaled, Zoe and Rilex glue a cut-up version of the text into an outline of an exposition structure. Deltora Quest Expositions Using the online persuasion map the class jointly constructs our own exposition persuading the King of Del to help the people of Del. Students use what we have
Students need more practise planning ideas. They also need more explicit activities on how to use a

Lana Howlett CPS 3H Writing Sessions Program Term 1 2013

read of The Forests of Silence by Emily Rhodda as stimulus to build arguments. http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/persuasion_map/ Using the jointly generated plan, students write their own exposition with at least 3 arguments.*

James draws the palace and city of Del and labels his work. He then writes simple sentences about his pictures that link with his labels. Khaled, Zoe and Rilex use a proforma of an exposition structure to support their writing. Expositions Continued Read Homework Should Be Banned (see www.spellodrome.com follow links to Writing Fun- Jenny Eather). Focus on the two parts of the argument stage: point and elaboration In groups, students decide if they agree/disagree with the topic and then brainstorm ideas and arguments for or against. Students list their ideas on butchers paper. Share ideas with the class. Students guess what point of view they hold, based on their arguments. Reread arguments of Homework Should Be Banned (Jenny Eather). Discuss and remind how arguments are developed and elaborated on. Students then practice elaborating on a point with a partner by brainstorming ideas for one argument/idea. They then write one argument using their ideas.* Khaled, Zoe and Rilex work in a group together with teacher assistance to guide discussion and act as a scribe. James glues a series of words together to make sentences. Expositions and Modality Students read Homework Should be Banned again. Discuss the strength of some of the emotive words that are written, e.g. should, believe, dreadfully, banned, entirely. How do these words make you feel? How persuasive/convincing/strong are they? How much room for doubt or disagreement is there when these words are used? Introduce the term Modality and discuss. Students draw a diagonal line in their book with the headings Low Modality in the bottom left hand corner and High Modality in the top right corner. Teacher does the same on the board. As a class, we then discuss different modal verbs, adverbs and adjectives and place them on the line of modality, depending on how strong/weak they are. Students also place the words on the line in their book. Extra Support A range of words, from more simple to more difficult, are discussed in order to cater for the range of abilities and vocabularies within the class. Provide a cline with a sample of words already on the line to act as markers for Khaled, Zoe and Rilex. James completes sight word work.

plan for their writing. Many dont see the link between planning for their writing and then using it to support their writing.

Students are now gaining a better understanding of how to build an argument.

The cline was an important visual to use as some are still getting the concept of what strong and weak modality is.

10 & 11

Modality Continued Display Stay Safe in the Sun Jenny Eather. Discuss and define the terms verbs, Most students well in adverbs and modality. Discuss the modality verbs and adverbs in the text. Are worked the groups. The they low/high modal words? use of a Model the activity and then in groups, students highlight and make a list of the modal thesaurus was verbs/adverbs. Students discuss and write other verbs that could be used instead helpful for that have a higher modality. Support group receives a smaller excerpt of the text and many. a list of words to look out for. Students then come back together as a class and discuss their higher modality words. Compare the same/similar verb/adverb eg may/must, can/will. Support group works with a teacher. Assessment: Assessment opportunities are marked with an * and are completed in conjunction with the set assessment tasks for Grade 3.
Lana Howlett CPS 3H Writing Sessions Program Term 1 2013