Writing
Krashen (1998) says, ‘Writing is thinking’. What do you think about
writing?
Write it down
‘Students must have writing models if they are to become writers, and
teachers must be those models.’
(Source: Olnes, 2017)
Stages (5) of language acquisition:
Where does writing start?
• Know the 5 stages of SLA
1. Pre – production
2. Early production
3. Speech emergence
4. Intermediate fluency
5. Advanced fluency
Teaching writing in FP (Note)
• Do you teach the mechanics of writing in FAL?
• Strategies taught in the HL can be used in FAL (IDM)
• What is the prerequisite to writing?
• Why are the stages of language acquisition set up the way they are?
• At what stage can you teach writing
• As their reading skills develop – they start
recognising words
• DO NOT START TEACHING WRITING.
IF THEY CANNOT READ
Scaffolding (metaphor) / Bruner (1950)
Elevation and
support
Methods and approaches of teaching writing
Scaffolding
• What is scaffolding?
• What is the ZPD?
(Zone of proximal development) – Timeline!!!!
• Current status of South African classrooms (could be covid related)
• Different ability levels in one class
Scaffolding: A definition
• In building terms, scaffolding refers to a platform that is temporarily
set up to aid builders. It gives them elevation and support.
• In education, the mental image and symbolism is similar to grasp. A
teacher acts as an ‘activator’ who helps a student master a new
concept. They use ‘fading,’ or the process of gradually lowering their
support level (or scaffolding), as a student gains hold of the new
concept, process, or task (Bruner, 1950).
Scaffolding in the classroom consists of helpful interactions between the
teacher and the student that enable the student to do something beyond
what he could do independently.
Here are some benefits of scaffolded instruction: Note
• Students experience a supportive learning environment
• Students feel free to ask questions, provide feedback, and support their
peers
• Teachers become facilitators of knowledge rather than content “experts”
• Students take a more active role in learning
• Students are able to take ownership of the learning and their classroom as
a community of learners
Verbal Scaffolds
• How information is verbally presented or explained to the students
during instruction. Here are ways to provide verbal scaffolds:
• Model the ‘think-a-loud’
• Slow your speech and enunciate
• Reinforce contextual definitions
• Simplify questions
• Engage in read-alouds in which you model correct pronunciations
Procedural Scaffolds
• Tools and resources to support the students as they gain access to the
learning. Here are ways to provide procedural scaffolds:
• Provide explicit modeling through visuals, gestures
• Allow for visual tools (organizers) as students manipulate information
• Use wait-time when asking questions to give all students an
opportunity to respond
• Provide discussion prompts (sentence frames) to support discussions
Can this learner write?
What does the sample tell us?
• What this sample tells me:
• This is a child who knows some letters! The sample contains just
letters, no symbols or numbers mixed in.
• He's able to print letters, mostly upper-case, with two lower case i's
also.
• This is a kid who's willing to write. That's a lot of work .
• He knows that writing carries a message, and he had something to
say.
?????
Where to go from here, instructionally:
The next stages of Nelson's writing can be enhanced by instruction that focuses
on two things:
• more letters being written that match the sounds in the words he wants to
write,
• and the development of a concept of word. These skills can be developed using
activities that focus on beginning sounds and tracking the match between
speech and print.
• What are beginning sounds/end sounds?
Concept of words for FAL
• There are lots of ways to develop concept of word that uses common,
everyday materials.
• Simple sentences, cut-up into their individual words ‘The cat had a
toy’ provide opportunities for learners to manipulate individual
words, putting them together to form sentences.
• The cat had a toy. / Die kat het ‘n speelding.
How would you teach this?
The cat had a toy. / Die kat het ‘n speelding.
What scaffolds were used?
FAL Afrikaans – what happened??????
How about writing in Arabic?