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> Action Plan
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Level: P5
Textbook units: ¡§Good Behaviour¡¨ and ¡§Be Nice to Others¡¨
Writing task: Writing a diary entry about bad behaviour for self reflection
| Objectives |
Implementation process |
| Providing students with opportunities to apply different language structures and vocabulary learned through the completion of purposeful writing tasks |
Step 1: Planning the writing curriculum
In collaboration with the officer, P5 teachers carried out a review of their existing school-based curriculum in order to devise a literacy programme based on a wide variety of text types. This review enabled the officer to enhance the teachers¡¦ understanding of how to plan a holistic curriculum that effectively addresses the need to develop students¡¦ writing skills progressively. The features of some text types were taught explicitly:
- Diaries
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Emails
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Stories |
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By integrating two textbook units ¡§Good behaviour¡¨ and ¡§Be nice to others¡¨ , students learned to:
- use adverbs of manner to describe behaviour
- use past tense to talk about past events
- use the modal verb ¡¥should¡¦ to give suggestions
To create an authentic context, students wrote a diary entry narrating an event in which they had behaved rudely, and had to reflect on what they could do to improve. |
| Helping students recognise text features and language structures of a diary entry |
Step 2: Helping students recognise text type features by deconstructing reading texts
Teachers first explained the purpose and target audience of the writing task. Then a diary entry was presented to introduce text type features such as what content to include (for example, references to the weather), and language items such as the use of past tense when narrating a past event. A diary graphic organiser was used to recap the text features. |
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Strengthening and consolidating knowledge of relevant language structures for use in the writing task
Teaching students to expand and elaborate ideas using graphic organisers
Raising students¡¦ awareness of paragraphing and appropriate use of cohesive devices
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Step 3: Helping students construct a text using a variety of pre-writing activities
Before asking students to compose their diary entries, teachers revisited target vocabulary and language structures using poems and articles in the textbook units. Interactive games were used to consolidate what students had learned.
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Pre-writing activities were carried out to provide sufficient language input. |
To help students reflect on and narrate their own experience, a modified ¡§cause-and-effect¡¨ graphic organiser was introduced. Students structured the content by describing the cause (event) and the effect (wrong behaviour), and giving suggestions (reflection). Teachers then conducted shared writing using ideas collated from the students, and also taught them how to elaborate and expand ideas by adding details in the graphic organisers.
Students structured the ideas using different graphic organisers
After analysing the class writing, teachers decided that there were two major areas for improvement ¡V paragraphing and use of cohesive devices to link ideas. Teachers used some poorly-written exemplars to focus on these two areas explicitly in class. Students were then asked to apply the newly-learned skills and revise their class writing. An improved version was constructed collaboratively by the teachers and the students.
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| Developing students¡¦ skills to revise and edit with peer support |
Step 4: Revising and editing
Teachers first discussed common writing problems identified from students¡¦ drafts. Students then exchanged their own pieces and helped each other correct and expand ideas. More ideas were observed in the final version.
Final Version |
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