UNITS 5&6

We are at the end of our journey and I do hope you had fun reading these blog posts about our semester. We have been speaking about Promoting Writing in the Primary Grades and what a great time we've had!!

This week we looked at some approaches and activities which can be used as a means of self- expression and communication as well as a source of pleasure and relaxation. Before writing, one must know why they are writing the piece (purpose), who will be reading it, how to appeal to them (audience) and how to structure the writing and the content to include (genre). 

 

We also looked at these six genres: story (narrative), informational (expository), descriptive, poetry, letters and journals. In each genre we identified the style, purpose, audience and gave an example(s) of a teaching/learning activity for each genre. Then, in groups of three we chose a genre and provided and explained some activities that can be used for each. 

Before this class, I never knew that there were so many activities we could use to help students improve their writing! I was shocked and they were fun and easy too. For example, my group chose journals and our activities were to have students write gratitude journals that allows them to keep a record of all the things they are grateful for and another activity was to revisit old journal entries and reflect on them.

One of the most amazing things I learnt in this unit is that each genre can take on one or more style. Style is the way the writing is dressed up or down and is reflected by the choice of words, sentence fluency and the writer's voice. So a piece can be frozen eg. The Bible, formal eg. business letters, consultative eg. sonnets, casual eg. some stories or intimate eg. love letters. 

AMAZING!!

The highlight of the end of the semester was going into a primary school to see first hand a student engaging in the writing process. The experience allowed me to see both what I would do when I go back into the classroom and what I would not do. It seemed as if most teachers still use the traditional approach to writing i.e give a topic and allow students to write on it, they mark it and that is the end of it. That will definitely not be my approach upon returning to the classroom. My students will interact will books, their peers and use technology during writing while I provide feedback and use different trends to help them develop their writing skills.

Here is a link to my observation of Tekiya.