Writing Activities

Developing spelling confidence will prepare students to write with confidence.

Text Summary Joint Writing

Activity 6

Whole class/individual

Scaffold the writing activity by firstly constructing a paragraph with the class. Elicit information from the students in the order that you want it. Follow the time sequence of the text. Work out beforehand what you think is the key information from the text so you can ask the right questions. Teach the students that by asking ‘wh’ questions we can generally get the key information from the text. Don’t make the text too long. A small paragraph is enough. Asking questions is such an important aspect to understanding a text that question asking can become a lesson in itself at a later date.

  • What happened on January 25 1788?
  • Who did it involve?
  • Why did they come?
  • What happened when they arrived and why?
  • How did it all work out?

Once you have a paragraph written on the board students can copy it into their books. Then rub the text from the board and see if students can rewrite it from memory. Some students might benefit from going more slowly; rub off some of the content words only and ask students to complete the sentences. Or you could copy the text then cut it up and have students put it back together without having to write anything.

Procedural Writing

Activity 7

Whole class/small group/individual

Damper is recognised as a traditional Australian food and is still made in Australia today. Discuss the reasons why damper was seen as a staple food in the early days of Australia. Ask if students have similar staple foods in their culture that can be prepared from miminal ingredients in minimal conditions.Source a recipe or use the one provided here. Read the recipe together and look at new words and spelling.

Australian Damper Bread

Ingredients

  • 4 cups self-raising flour
  • 3/4 - 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup water

Method

  • Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
  • Mix in the sugar.
  • Rub in the butter with your (clean) hands.
  • Make a hole in the top of the flour and pour in the milk and water.
  • Mix well with a knife until the dough comes clean from the sides of the bowl.
  • Turn onto a floured board and knead until smooth.
  • Shape into a mounded loaf and bake at 200 degrees for 25 minutes.
  • Then lower the temperature to 180 degrees and cook for 10 - 15 minutes until done. The loaf should be a light golden brown colour and sound hollow when tapped.

Look at the structure of the text. Discuss how it looks different to the Convict text. Discuss the list of ingredients and how there are no sentences in this kind of list. Discuss other places where you might find lists. Explain about dot points. Elicit from students why we use dot points or numbered points in this type of text. Is it easier to read than a list of items in a paragraph? Discuss the sequence of the instructions in the text and how the instructions are not arranged around dates and time but around the order of activities involved in making a product, in this case damper.

  • Cut the instructions up and in pairs students can reconstruct them. An alternative activity is to jumble the instructions and students can put them into the right order.

Imperative tense

Another feature of procedural texts is the use verbs in the imperative tense. Explain that verbs are process words that refer to doing, saying and sensing, and having and being. Time can also be expressed by the verb: we add ed generally to express time that is past; and ing to express something that is or was happening continuously eg. I walked to school. I was walking to school…

When we are giving instructions we use the verb its basic form. Stand up! Put the sugar in the bowl. Give some instructions to demonstrate this. Ask the students to give the person next to them an instruction. Explain that we call this the Imperative tense. In instructions the verb is usually at the beginning of the instruction.

  • Give the students the following text and ask them to write instructions for boiling pasta, beginning each new step in the procedure with the next underlined word. There should be eight instructions.
How to cook pasta

You need to fill a large pot with water. Then you need to heat the water on high until it boils. Next you have to add a teaspoon of salt to the boiling water. After that you add the pasta to the boiling water. You need to boil the pasta for about 20 minutes. When it is ready you need to drain the pasta. You have to add the sauce straight away so it doesn’t stick. Enjoy your pasta.

Explain that damper was often drunk with a cup of ‘billy’ tea. Talk about the steps involved in making a cup of tea.

  • Ask students to write the instructions for making a cup of tea. Remind them to start each instruction off with the verb, not to write ‘you’ in the instruction and to use numbered points or dot points.

Writing Activities Convicts.doc