Week Four: Discussion Task #2

Week Four: Discussion Task #2

Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful

Having earned some experience with the writing classes I am in a good position to recommend a proven strategy for the meaningful writing, which includes affective elements. The below step-by-step guide reflects one of the strategies I used successfully with elementary school students.

I. Introducing Strategy

1. Introduction of a writing strategy (storytelling thru sequencing, describing, introducing people, 5 Ws or any other) that structures and unifies writing process as well as familiarize students to critical thinking.

II. Reading Stage

2. Vocabulary and pre-reading activities with flash cards that help learners expanding the background and reinforce them how to use new words in the passage. To deal with grammar the language garden tasks were employed sometimes.
3. Exemplary passage with engaging reading topic that serves as a basis for the subsequent discussion topics. Introduced with fun, illustrations, and expressions that are common in everyday conversations.
4. Reading comprehension activities (true or false statements, fill-in blanks tasks) with the aim of checking reading skills such as skimming and scanning.

III. Conversation Stage

5. Personalized. Speaking exercises that help to develop opinions about the topic by answering related questions or telling a story with connections to young learners experience and senses (see, hear, taste, touch, and smell). All that helps them to gather details easier.
6. Breaking down the topic into 3 or 4 topic points and mark them with colors. Next, classmates talk about them in pairs. Then, I make an open question for each topic point while students answer them and make notes on 3 topic points in the topic organizer.

IV. Composition Stage

7. Providing workbooks that promote creative writing as a way to express student’s views.
8. Planning pages are given for each topic to help students come up with well-structured and coherent piece of writing. The sheets contained title line, topic line, a body sentences section corresponding to the main topic points discussed earlier, and closing sentence line. All of them marked by different colors.
9. Final work. Writing time when students start working as they planned out after a signal from a triangle or xylophones.
10. Error correction and reading the passage out loud in the class based on lottery, a vocabulary game known in Korea as the Hangman, or any fun activities.
11. Teacher and peers feedback is marked by stickers encouraging students to share their written work with classmates and family.

In my view, the entire writing processes should be designed to encourage young students to learn the language by thinking and conversing in English at first. Then, after using a topic as a conversation tool, I used creative writing strategies (the 5 Ws, describing, personal response, compare and contrast, making predictions……etc.) so students could practice written communication affectively and with joy. I am optimistic and hope that the guide provided an enjoyable and fruitful experience.