Literacy: Writing
There are two interconnected strands in the New Zealand English Curriculum:
•
Listening, Reading and Viewing
•
Speaking, Writing and Presenting
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents
The aim of writing instruction is to build students’ accuracy, their fluency, and their ability to
create meaningful text; to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and
information. Teachers use a variety of strategies in the teaching of writing.
Shared writing involves the teacher and a group of students – often the whole class – in
planning and constructing a text together. The teacher models and talks through the process
of constructing a text. She gives explicit instruction on how to use writing strategies during
the process. The students contribute their ideas and expertise to the process of constructing
the text.
This is often followed by guided writing; when the teacher has constructed part of a text, the
students continue writing their own texts, working with teacher support but as individual
writers. Through shared writing, students can take part in constructing a more complex text
than they would be able to write on their own.
Modelling is also used as an instructional strategy to show students, step by step, the
planning, shaping, and structuring of a text for a specific purpose. The teacher may model the
use of a “mind map” or “web” to show how a writer assembles ideas and then sorts them to
be ready for writing. Carefully planned questions help students to think about how a
particular text might be organised. The teacher may prompt by showing them similar familiar
material or by reviewing with them the features of a particular type of text.
As well as working on teacher-directed writing tasks, students are given time to write for
their own purposes while engaging with topics that are significant to them.
Independent writing gives students opportunities to explore ideas that interest them and to
practise what they have learned during shared and guided writing. Students are given
opportunities to write simply and honestly about their own experiences and things that matter
a lot to them and to share their writing.
When the students are writing independently, their teachers observe their writing and monitor
their progress, simultaneously supporting or guiding when necessary. The aim is for writing
to be an enjoyable activity with students enjoying the opportunity of sharing their writing and
reflecting critically on what they have written and to consider how the reader will feel when
reading it.
Students should always have the opportunity to share their finished writing with a group or
class and to see their work displayed. The teacher models collaborative ways of talking about
writing so that the students are supported in sharing their work and can help one another to
extend their thinking and clarify their meaning. When everyone is involved in helping to
extend a piece of writing in a supportive and creative classroom climate, all the students
benefit.
Progress indicators are used by teachers to help them evaluate their students’ progress and
achievement in writing. Teachers make a ‘best fit’ judgement as to the level at which their
students’ writing most predominantly sits for each of the seven content areas: Audience
Awareness and Purpose, Content/Ideas, Structure/Organisation, Language Resources,
Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation. Below is an example of the ‘Describe’ progress
indicators.
The English exemplars are samples of authentic student work annotated to illustrate
learning, achievement, and quality in relation to levels 1 to 5 of English in the New Zealand
Curriculum. The English exemplars relate to every strand of the English curriculum, to a
range of achievement objectives, and to a variety of associated text forms.
The purposes of the English exemplars are to:
• illustrate key features of learning, achievement, and quality at different stages of
student development
• help students and teachers to identify the next learning steps
• guide teachers in their interpretation of curriculum levels.
The written exemplars are based on students' first or second drafts, rather than their
"published" (fully corrected) work. The teachers' comments have been left in place in the
original work shown. The example below is a Level 1 basic (1i) exemplar.
Teachers use the exemplars as teaching tools with their students, and also to compare
judgements either to confirm or adjust them. They collaborate to establish a shared
understanding of what achievement at a curriculum level looks like and whether or not the
student has demonstrated achievement at that level (sub-level). Through the moderating
process, teachers work towards making judgements that are consistent and comparable.
National Standards have been set for reading and writing and below is an example of the
standard of writing teachers would expect from students who are meeting the standard after
two years at school.
Key characteristics of students'
writing at each level: Each
standard is accompanied by a
description of the key
characteristics of students' writing
that can be expected at that level.
These descriptions highlight the
increasing demands in terms of
the processes that students use as
they write for specific learning
purposes across the curriculum as
well as in terms of the increasing
complexity of the texts they
create.
The standards are illustrated by
examples, appropriate to each
level, of unassisted student writing
in a variety of curriculum areas.
These illustrations are
accompanied by annotations,
which make the development of
the writing explicit.