Session

Teaching Activities/ Steps

Writing Skills Involved

1-4

Pre-writing 1 :Sorting Game

• Put students in groups & give each group some words & phrases about the traditional H.K. festivals. Get the groups to sort out those relevant to the festivals they work on. Revise basic structural patterns & ask the groups to make sentences about the festivals using the words & phrases.

-Put words in logical order to make meaningful phrases/ sentences

-Use a small range of structural patterns

Pre-Writing 2: Intensive Reading & Class Discussion

• Describe the writing task & specify the writing purpose & audience.
• Introduce the graphic organiser for ‘factual descriptions’ using the 7-5-3 Festival star diagram. Go over the factual description of 7-5-3 Festival.
• Get each group member to read the jigsaw information about Urini Nal to create a star diagram in groups. Check answers & go over the factual description of Urini Nal.
• Discuss in class the similarities & differences between the 2 children’s festivals using a venn diagram worksheet & brainstorm the other possible aspects of describing a children’s festival.

-Identify purpose & audience for the writing task

-Gather & share information, ideas & language by observing

-Gather & share information using concept maps

-Use appropriate format, conventions & language features of factual descriptions

-Express imaginative ideas with the help of cues

Pre-writing 3: Team Stand & Share

• Highlight the meaning of ‘ 7-5-3 Festival’ & ‘Urini Nal’ in the reading materials.
• Get students in groups to brainstorm the possible meaning of a children’s festival using Team Stand & Share. Allow drawing if students have difficulties with the vocabulary. Discuss in class the irrelevant or facetious answers while listing the ideas on the blackboard.
• Get students to choose at least 1 idea from the class-created list for their own writing.

-Gather & share information, ideas & language by brainstorming & listing

Pre-Writing 4: Simultaneous Roundtable

• Highlight the celebration activities of the ‘7-5-3 Festival’ & ‘Urini Nal’ in the reading materials.
• Get students in groups to brainstorm the celebration activities using Simultaneous Roundtable. Allow drawing if students have difficulties with the vocabulary. Get students to post up and read all the group work to select useful ideas (Note Sheet).

-Gather & share information, ideas & language by brainstorming & listing

Pre-Writing 5 Mapping

• Get students to draw the star diagrams for their own children’s festivals using the ideas generated.

-Gather & share ideas using concept maps

Pre-writing 6: Reading & Colour-coding

• Get students to compare the paragraph content of the 2 descriptions & explore the possible grouping of ideas in different paragraphs to start planning for the paragraphs they would like to write (Worksheet).
• Explain & demonstrate how similar ideas can be colour-coded on the star diagrams to show paragraphing using the mentor texts. Get students to colour-code their own star diagrams.

-Gather information & ideas by observing

-Use paragraphs

Pre-writing 7: Sequencing & Labelling

• Ask students in groups to sequence a jumbled description of a festival. Explain & discuss any alternative possible arrangement.
• Explain & demonstrate how the coloured clusters on the star diagrams can be labelled to show the sequence of the paragraphs using the mentor texts. Get students to give a key to their own colour-coded star diagrams.

-Use paragraphs

-Decide on the sequence of content

5-6

Drafting

• Heighten students’ awareness of the intended audience.
• Get students to do freewriting using the ideas from their star diagrams.

-Draft written texts

-Describe, express, explain ideas

-Produce written texts appropriate to context, purpose & audience

-Use available resources

Revising

• Mark Draft 1 in terms of Content & Organisation and set the teaching and learning objective of the focused revision -- relating the ‘background information’ & ‘celebration activities’ to the ‘meaning’ of the children’s festival.
• Give a mini-lesson to bring out the concept of coherence and model the strategy of improving the focused aspect --- making explicit elaboration to connect the ‘background information’ & ‘celebration activities’ to the ‘meaning’ of the children’s festival.
• Get students in pairs to discuss ways to improve Draft 1 using the targeted strategy (Worksheet)
• Ask students to write Draft 2 with the improvements made.

- Rearrange the order of ideas, add details & delete irrelevant ideas to revise written texts with peer/ teacher support

7

Editing

• Mark Draft 2 in terms of Language and set the teaching and learning objectives of the focused editing -- spelling & complete sentences.
• Give a mini-lesson to teach the targeted language focuses.
• Get students in pairs to peer-edit Draft 2 in terms of spelling & sentence structure (Peer-editing Checklist).
• Ask students to write Draft 3 in the MMLC.
• Get students to proofread Draft 3 (Checklist) & make necessary changes before submitting their work.

-Re-read the draft & correct spelling & grammar with peer/ teacher support

Home-work

Presenting

• Mark Draft 3 & get students to print the final product in the MMLC.
• Encourage students to add pictures to match the text in the final product.
• Display students’ work..

-Present writing using appropriate layout