Answer:

Rationale for a focus on the writing process

The recognition of the writing process engages students in writing for specific personal or social purposes and alerts students to the conscious and considered creation of texts. It focuses their attention, even in the very early years of school, on the need to be attentive to authorial and secretarial aspects of writing, defined by Daffern and Mackenzie (2015) as embracing:

Authorial

text structure

sentence and grammatical structures

vocabulary and word choice.

Secretarial

spelling

punctuation

handwriting/legibility.

Early research around embedding the writing process into classroom practice (Graves, 1994; Calkins, 1994) highlights high levels of student engagement with writing when their interests are legitimated and their topic choices are honoured.

Instituting a writing classroom that involves a writing process of planning, drafting or composing, revising or editing, and publishing, actively involves students in purposeful writing around which both their authorial and secretarial skills and understandings can develop.

Supporting EAL/D learners in the writing process

Explicit teaching and feedback

When teachers plan to be pro-active and interventionist in terms of supporting students’ writing, their role throughout the writing process can take the following forms:

1. Planning and rehearsing: “Getting started” on a piece of writing can be a challenge for many students, so the teacher’s role in supporting students at this planning stage might involve:

brainstorming ideas for writing

helping the students select a writing focus from a suite of possibilities

modelling how initial ideas for writing might be noted (as pictures, mind maps, notes, etc.)

jointly listing the key parts of the text. “As a class, let’s list as dot points what we need to include in this piece of writing.”

thinking about the genre or text type that might be appropriate for different writing focuses

talking to peers to generate ideas.

Supporting EAL/D learners to plan and rehearse their writing

2. Drafting or composing: Students need support for recording ideas in an initial draft. Teacher modelling or joint text construction can be very supportive for students at this point. This might involve:

modelling how to convert ideas or speech to written text. So, the teacher engaging in a ‘think-aloud protocol’ might be of benefit, such as, “I need to remember that I am writing this for people who were not there when the events happened. So, I’ll need to include information like where the action took place and who was there. Let’s see—how will I start …”

enlisting student support to collaboratively construct a text (or sections of a text). “Who has a suggestion for what important details we need to add here?”

demonstrating risk taking strategies in undertaking ambitious writing. “I’m not sure how to spell extrovert—but it’s a perfect word to use here. I’ll have a go at it, underline it and check the spelling later. I need to get my ideas down first.”

making connections from texts read to those being drafted. “Remember how E.B. White started Charlotte’s Web with dialogue? Why don’t you try that in your narratives?”

explicitly drawing attention to linguistic structures and features of different text types. “Remember, this is a recount. It happened in the past, so we need to use past tense verbs.”

Supporting EAL/D learners to draft and compose their text

ABC Education Literacy Mini Lessons

The Department collaborated with ABC Education to create a series of videos. All 16 mini lessons based on content from the Literacy Teaching Toolkit are available on the ABC Education literacy mini lessons page.

Explanation: