Week 4 Workshop: Writing. A Retrospective

Ahhh Week 4. Such a long time ago. We were different people then. But here’s a look back at what we did in that most wonderful of weeks: Week 4.

The Week 4 topic was Writing and to begin the workshop we presented our findings from the pre-workshop tasks. The readings for the week were from Winch et al Chapters 14 and 15. We were asked to look at a piece of writing in the text book and determine what type of text it was. We all agreed that it was a recount because the author was describing events that happened.

The different text types defined in the readings were:

- Recount (who, what, when, where)

- Procedure (recipe or experiment)

- Information report (begins in upper primary. E.g. the Sydney Harbour Bridge)

- Explanation (e.g. how to take medicine or how to live by the Healthy Eating Pyramid)

- Exposition/argument (dot points of debate arguments i.e. 3 points and conclusion)

During group discussion we all agreed that learning about all the different text types is important in order to become a better-rounded writer. The only negatives we could see coming out of this type of writing program could be that learning about how to write a procedure, for example, may not be used as often as the others and therefore more time could be put into how to write an exposition or recount. However, we agreed that there was still a place for all text types and they all required certain skills.

We also agreed that the physical aspects of writing are still extremely important. In a few of our PAR 2 days we’ve seen instances of students choosing to write solely on iPads or laptops instead of doing handwriting. Quite often their handwriting skills were fairly average. This wasn’t just confined to lower primary. Students as high as Year 7 and 8 had poor handwriting skills and these need to be practised extensively.

We also enjoyed the activity of looking at all the stages of handwriting a child goes through, from illegible scribbling on a page to cursive script. It’s just crazy to think I used to write like that! It certainly gave us some perspective for what levels we can expect students to be at once we begin teaching.

Josh Rouse