Assignment 2: Folio Part B

Section 1: Harper

Area of need for Harper’s writing development

The need for Harper’s writing development in this particular scenario is spelling. The

learning to spell accurately is an important aspect for learning good writing (Fellowes &

Oakley, 2014). Harper’s spelling mistakes in the narrative such as wrong spelling of words

like ‘fery’, ‘coftbel’, makes it hard to decode and comprehend for the reader. Writing with

spelling mistakes results in the reader focusing on decoding the text rather than understanding

the meaning of text (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). It is also being said that children with good

spelling are more competent with their self-correction and self-monitoring when writing

(Westwood, 2005, p. 6).

Teaching strategy to support Harper’s writing development

To improve Harper’s learning about writing especially with Spelling words, could be done by

using modelled writing strategy. The modelled writing is a teaching strategy where children

observe the educator’s text in a classroom or small group (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). The

educator uses the written text and children are able to see educator’s texts, forming

meaningful sentences. The text written by educators should address children’s writing ability

and learning needs. The intention of using modelled writing strategy is that it is only

conducted for short period of time to focus on improving children competency with particular

writing text.

For example, in this particular case, educator’s work on spelling specific words according to

Harper’s need of learning writing development such as words ‘very, comfortable’ and

‘house’.

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

Lesson to support and extend Harper’s writing development.

The lesson plan for Harper’s writing could be using ‘think aloud’ teaching method. In this

method, teacher’s focus on spelling while writing text. The teacher providing the

opportunities to children to ‘hear’ while writing the text to make meaning. For instance, if the

teacher focusing on specific words in the case of Harper’s writing, might say, ‘this is the

word ‘comfortable’ by reading it aloud to children while writing’. Or by saying, ‘this is very

big house sounds it consists of word ‘ow’ but it is actually made up of word ‘ou’ in it or by

adding ‘what should we write down next to make meaningful text’. The thinking aloud

techniques allows the educator to demonstrate more effectively how the writer should apply

skills, knowledge, processes and strategies when writing (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). When

an educator is done with writing text, children could be provided worksheets of class text in

which they have to find missing letters- which could be removed from beginning, middle or

end of the word using shared reading context. Shared reading provides opportunity to explore

more words and spelling patterns, as it helps children to learn about letter-sound pattern in

words, along with visualising the word spelling (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014).

The missing letters can be provided in a blog to choose from. During this activity, educators

along with children, read the text and identify the missing word within the letters and correct

them by replacing with missing letter. Learning to spell is more of a thinking process than a

task of memorisation (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). According to Cox (2013), children who are

good at spelling are also good at figuring out (decoding) words when reading.

The use of Spelling software could be used to enhance Harper’s writing development. In the

twenty first century, plenty of software are designed for children to improve their spelling

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

(Oakley, 2007). By using software like Phonics Alive 3 (The Speller), helps Harper’s in

learning the spelling of words and can be used to supplement child-centred spelling

approaches.

Madison

Area of need for Madison’s writing development

Madison’s writing demonstrates lack of grammar, as written text with grammatical errors

conveys the writers line of thoughts and it’s difficult for readers to comprehend the text. The

grammar is basically arranging words or group of words to make sentences and this is called

syntax. In this scenario, Madison needs to understand the written text ability and use of

syntax (grammar) to correctly make meaningful sentences. As without grammar knowledge,

the written text would be more complicated to understand and comprehend by reader more

than a shopping list (Crow, 2010, p. 7).

The Australian Curriculum places emphasis on children learning about language as well as

learning to use language to communicate. Learning about language as a system includes

learning about sentence level structure.

Teaching strategy to support Madison’s writing development

Madison requires support in her writing text to understand the use of syntax and the role of

grammar in efficient writing and oral communication. In order to maintain and achieve a

certain level of writing ability with Madison, shared writing strategy could be implemented.

The shared writing is a technique where both educators and children work together to

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

compose written text (McKenzie, 1985). The aim of shared writing is to create text, whether

it be a narrative, a report or whatever, which is well written in both content and form

(Morrow, 2012). Madison is going to benefited by shared writing as whole focus would be on

developing the content of the written text.

Lesson to support and extend Madison’s writing development

The educator plans an activity of writing a report on a particular topic with children. For

example, a report on ‘Bush Fire’, which gives children a chance to express their emotions and

concerns related to the community, involved in the fire and how it affected local community.

This helps children to form content of the report using variety of sentences such as simple,

complex and compound. In the Australian Curriculum: English is the development of

children’s grammar and punctuation knowledge and use in writing begins in the early years of

school (ACARA, 2011). Children would use their thoughts to make variety of sentences,

using different types of words depending on their specific role in conveying the meaning of a

sentence (Ogle & Beers, 2012).

During shared writing session, educators could discuss the role of grammar in writing text,

by giving a reference to the sentence. For instance, in a particular sentence such as ‘The bush

fire usually occurs during hot and windy days.’ Educators might speak to the children about

the use of verb, subject, adverbs or adjectives in the sentence to make meaningful and

complete sentence. Educator could talk about the use of capital letters, full stop (.) and other

parts of sentences. Once, educator and children are finished with written text, children would

be given an opportunity to reread the report, which gives them extensive exposure to gain

unique ways of writing the language (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014).

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

The use of ICT in children learning development brings ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al.,

1992), via means of digital norms such as video, audio and graphics. To extend Madison’s

grammar skills, educators could introduce child to a word processing Clicker 6 writing

software, which helps Madison to frame sentences using multimedia tools. The Australian

Curriculum requires children in the Foundation Year to construct texts using software

including word processing programs (ACARA, 2012). Using this software, children would be

able to frame variety of sentences: from simple to compound sentences and helps children to

understand the elements of sentence structure and grammar (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014).

Section 2: Comparison of teaching strategies

Modelled writing is a specific strategy which allows the teacher to explicitly demonstrate the

process of writing by ‘thinking aloud’ with Harper. Whereas shared writing includes both

educators and Madison in a group to achieve a particular task. The children involve

themselves as an active listeners or observers to educators in modelled writing. In contrast,

educators and children both work together or act as active participants through discussion and

contributing thoughts to written text. Moreover, modelled writing should have a clear

teaching goal for Harper to enhance child writing development through topic chosen by an

educator which aims to improve child spelling word skills. Whereas, Madison has a sense of

ownership by collaborating with educators by deciding what should be included in the text

and how to express using ideas and suggestions in the text (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). The

discussion via shared writing helps Madison to understand the importance of process and

strategies for composing texts, which helps to achieve particular effects of writing such as the

use of verb, adverb or proper use of syntax to complete the sentence (Fellowes & Oakley,

2014).

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

Benefits and limitations of each teaching strategy

There are both benefits and limitations of each strategy used to enhance children writing

development. The benefit of modelled writing strategy for Harper is educator focuses on

child’s particular need of writing text development throughout the activity session. But in

modelled writing, students are merely observers (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014), which means

Harper is only going to observe the educator without any interactions or collaborations within

the group. The educator leads the written text, like an old teaching technique where children

should be seated in a row to clearly see the educator text and depend on educator instructions

(Fellowes & Oakley, 2014).

The shared writing strategy for Madison, is a kind of collaboratively work done by educator

and child, where both are involved to achieve a task. It is a step for children moving towards

an independent writing (Routman, 1994). The limitation of shared strategy is that it does not

work for short period of time which means if educator wants to see Madison improvement in

grammar, then it should be done on regularly basis for about 10-15 minutes to achieve the

goal. It might not help other children writing development level, as it is a small group activity

which includes children with different level of learning.

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2011). English as an

additional language or dialect: Teacher resource: EAL/D learning progression. Retrieved

February 2014 from <www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/EALD_Resource_-_EALD_

Learning_Progression.pdf>

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2012). Information and

communication technology (ICT) capability. Retrieved February 2014 from

<www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/ Information-and-

Communication-Technology-capability/Introduction/Introduction>

Cox, C. (2013). Teaching Language Arts: A student centred classroom (6th edn). Boston:

Pearson Education.

McKenzie, M. G. (1985). Shared writing: Apprenticeship in written language matters.

London: Centre for Language in Primary Education.

Morrow, L. M. (2012). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and

write (7th edn). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Oakley, G. (2007). Can ICT help children spell? Practically Primary, 12(1), 45–7.

Ogle, D. & Beers, J. W. (2012). Engaging in the language arts: Exploring the power of

language (2nd edn). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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 Assignment 2: Folio Part B

Routman, R. (1994). Invitations: Changing as teachers and learners K–12. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann.

Westwood, P. (2005) Spelling: Approaches to teaching and assessment (2nd edn).

Melbourne: ACER.

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