Improving NAPLAN writing by Peter Count

Narrative writing

pcount — 2018-09-14 01:03:41 UTC

Teach sub-genre and allow time for students to work out typical characters, settings, plots etc for the various sub-genres. If they get hit with a narrative in the writing test, they don't have to start from scratch thinking of characters, settings, plotlines; they can just pick a sub-genre and weave the prompt into the (almost) pre-prepared story. Example attached:

Essay Writing

pcount — 2018-09-14 01:14:58 UTC

According to the current course outlines, students write a total of four essays in Years 7-8. This can't be enough for them to master this skill. I've taught the 5-paragraph essay structure to primary school students. If the topics are simple enough, they have no problem learning the structure. Whilst it's important to teach sentence and paragraph construction, these things don't exist in isolation and are better taught within the context of essay writing.
Students should be writing 2-3 essays a semester. They don't all have to be summative assessments. Structuring essays is a great collaborative exercise for small groups and allows peers to help each other.

Lower School Narrative Writing (esp Yr 7)

pcount — 2018-09-14 03:10:10 UTC

Instead of allocating 2-3 weeks on a narrative unit with students writing a short story at the end, use the Interactive Notebook to teach and practise narrative writing techniques over the course of the semester. Students can spend 20-30 minutes a week on concepts such as dialogue, establishing setting, figurative language etc and develop a number of short stories. At the end of the semester, they choose one, craft it up as best they can and submit for marking. This way, narrative writing isn't compartmentalized into a three week unit. That time can then be allocated to other units.

Quick Writes

2018-09-19 03:59:55 UTC

I don't teach lower school English, but have structured two sessions of quick-writing into my lesson routines every week for my Year 10s. What ever our focus (persuasive or creative), I ask students to spend 10-15 minutes writing on a set stimulus. This is fairly basic, but it ensures that what ever the unit that we're working on, they have practice writing to a prompt and getting their ideas quickly onto a page. I will also give them set parameters, for example, if exploring elements of figurative or descriptive language, I would ask them to use a specific device (eg, similes, metaphors, tactile imagery) to practise formulating in their response.

Building on Quickwrites

pcount — 2018-09-20 02:33:29 UTC

If students are quite good at writing, you can substitute the Quickwrite for the 10 Minute Writing, a slightly more advanced strategy (attached).

Literacy Operational Plan 2018 - 2020

2018-10-08 09:00:47 UTC

It is important to remember that this Year's NAPLAN assessment was sat at around the same time that our current Literacy Operational Plan (English) was being written. Please see the attached plan for more information on what is being done to improve our students' Literacy skills in Lower School English. :)

Explicit Teaching, A Process Approach and Functional Grammar are all essential practices for improvement.

2018-10-08 09:05:29 UTC

Please see the attached model which is relevant to teaching Writing in all LA's, but particularly English.

Identify stylistic features

suekovacevic65 — 2018-10-26 01:24:15 UTC

Use models to identify stylistic features of text types- eg: 'marking the text', including grammatical features such as modals, cohesive ties, transitions & nominalisation.

Bump it Up Walls

suekovacevic65 — 2018-10-26 03:44:09 UTC

Walls or exercises that focus on identifying the differences between Satisfactory, High & Excellent standards of writing.