Starting the IPEELL strategy In the first lesson, talk about the specific text type that is to be the focus of learning. Students need to understand why a particular type of writing is used and who might be the intended audience. The main focus of Stage 1 is to ask the students to complete an initial writing task. This task will provide the baseline against which future improvement will be measured. As students learn about a particular text type, there should be an expectation that the quality of their writing will improve. This improvement is very motivating for students. Students should be provided with an interesting stimulus for the initial task, which could be a film, a picture, a simulated incident, book-based or a context related to topic work. Whatever the starting point, it has to be relevant to the text type to be taught and it should engage the students. Let’s say that the text type that is the focus of learning is persuasive writing. Having talked to the students briefly about the power of persuasion, they are then asked to write a persuasive piece to achieve a specific goal. For example, a local building developer is seeking planning permission to build houses on the school playing fields and students need to write to the local council to express their viewpoint. A reasonable amount of time should be allocated for the exercise so that students can respond fully. The finished work should be collected and reviewed by the teacher. At this stage, no formal feedback is given to the students.
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IPEELL Stage 1: Why write?
