20
Action
Activities
Jen McVeity

Jen McVeity
 Author x 20 books
 Churchill Fellow
 National Literacy
Champion
 Creator - Seven Steps
 EX TEACHER!

Got to make the ‘O’ join up

Be creative!!!

How to Teach Writing
Without Writing a Word

Secret is Chunking

Ideas from Seven Steps
 Narrative  Persuasive

KISS
7 x simple techniques
-created by an author
100 x writing activities
- that take less than 10 minutes a day.

Story Graph

Story Graph

Action Activities
 1. Chatterbox - Random Ideas generator
 2. Daily joke – story graph
 3. Pixar – 5 min shorts
 4. Film trailers – how will they end?
 5. Heroes + Villains + Problems = Plan

Action Activities
 6. Quotes from authors on planning
 Jackie French:
 ‘I wrote my first book down the dunny in the backyard. It was the only peaceful place I could daydream. Books need more
THINKING about than writing!’

Action Activities
 7. Create a verbal story using kids as actors.
 8. Use cracked fairy tales as plays.
 9. Morning Show and Tell anecdotes – kids tell stories to follow the graph.
 10. Tell myths and legends. Refer to graph.

11. Film ad – on your school

12. Extend
Jump

Problems

How will it all END?

Action Activities
 13. Order three pictures and tell story
 14. Draw pictures along graph - plan
 Picture books – follow story graph

Story Graph

 Narrative
Action Activities
 Persuasive

Secret is Chunking

Say ‘no’ to the Nerdy kid

First impressions count

Nigel, graph of story

15. Start with dialogue
 ‘Look out!’
 ‘Catch!’
 ‘Dare you to jump.’

Action Activities
 16. Kids find THEIR favourite movie start.
 17. Tell kids the story starts you ‘hate’ the most. e.g. ‘Once-upon-a-time.’
 18. Publish in school newsletter.

19. How authors write - quotes
 Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with.
 (Nancy Ann Dibble )

20. Three word starts
– Anaconda
– Tattoo
– lounge suite
 ‘Darling’, she said as she lovingly traced the anaconda tattoo on his chest, ‘I think we need a new lounge suite.’

Seven Steps Surround Us
 Movies
 Ads
 TV: Master Chef, Biggest Loser, The Voice
 Jokes
 Dinner table stories (or not!)
 Poetry
 Books

Implementation
Suggest two weeks on every step.
Consistency
DON’T go for the quick fix.

The Australian Curriculum:
English aims - students:
 Appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue.

Education Minister 2011
 We want our teachers to feel confident to trial new approaches based on research,
 knowledge and evidence, and accept possible failure, as part of this approach.

 (The Hon. Martin Dixon, MP, Minister for
Education, November 2011)

Noise is Nouce!

Some Results
 Thornlands: Over 25% of Year 5 students scored off the scale.
 Greenslopes: Huge difference between math and lit scores now.
 Casino HS: A two level rise in their literacy scores.

Scotch College
 Seven years later they are still using the program.
 Highlights for me have been the wonderful response to your Seven Steps approach and the enthusiasm towards writing from both the boys and the staff. I have been thrilled with the results... (Scotch College)

Kilcummin
 My kids and I have been making story graphs (using pictures instead of words) from well known stories for the past week now and they love it! We had some kids not able to attend school last week because we had so much rain and they even did their own graphs at home!
 (Amanda Lindeman, P-3 teacher)

The Hard Part
 Writing is not something you do with a pen, it is something you do with
your brain. (Jen McVeity)
 (How much writing have you done so far?)

The Marking Rubrics (48 pts)
 1 Audience (6 marks)
 2 Text structure (4 marks)
 3 Ideas (5 marks)
 4 Persuasive devices (4 marks)
 5 Vocabulary (5 marks)
 6 Cohesion (4 marks)
 7 Paragraphing (3 marks)
 8 Sentence structure (6 marks)
 9 Punctuation (5 marks)
 10 Spelling (6 marks)

Keep Kids Creative
 Writing is NOT spelling and grammar
 Don’t worry about spelling until the end!
 (e.g. OUR speed writing today)

Beta (Conscious)

Alpha (Subconscious)


Alpha and Beta

Don’t walk around the room

The message is important

Jake Parker
 Were has he gone his mother screamed whilst shoving more chocolate in her mouth.
 (Jake Parker Yr 9 Pyramid Hill)

Jake
 It’s just me and the tree, this has to stop.
It’s lookin at me with it’s green leafy eyes.
It’s a showdown Just me and the tree.

Consistency rules!
 Change can’t
 happen in a day.
 But it can
 in a term.

Food Fight

4 Person + 10 Minutes = Recount
 It’s a Food Fight.
 Game on!

On the same page
 Wicked Grade 3’s
 In a classroom
 Use names of people in your group.

Rule 1 : Use Other People’s
Brains!
 1. Divide into groups FOUR

Person 1
 You are in charge of the fruit and vegetables.
–
– old squishy bananas old tomatoes
– grapes
 Bananas squished into shoes/ grapes fired with rulers across the room, etc, etc

Person 2
 You are in charge of the hot food.
– spaghetti
– chili stew
 What is the messiest place that food can go?
 e.g. bowl of spaghetti over the head.

Person 3
 You are in charge of the sweets.
– e.g. bubblegum
– ice-cream
– Jelly
 What is the messiest place that food can go?
 e.g. jelly in hair.

Person 4
 Top and Tail.
 i.e. Sizzling Start and Ending with impact.

Ready, set, write!
 You have 2.5 minutes to write your part of the story.
 Remember write fast, fix spelling later.

Talk it up.
 All done? Now arrange yourselves in order and read your story to another group!

Congratulations!
Seven Steps
Master

Agenda: The Seven Steps
1. Plan for Success
2. Sizzling Starts
_________________________________
3. Tightening Tension
4. Dynamic Dialogue
5. Show, Don't Tell
6. Ban the Boring Bits
7. Exciting Endings

www.sevenstepswriting.com
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Homework (5 hours)
 Watch TV - the ads – find planning
 Watch a movie – find Sizzling Starts
 Read a book – enjoy!

Secret is Chunking

Say ‘no’ to the Nerdy kid

Go Play

www.sevenstepswriting.com