4.2 Writing activities

Pass by when saw a man half dead: ☐ Samaritan ☐ Priest ☐ Jesus ☐ Disciple

Who made a question to Jesus? ☐ Samaritan ☐ Lawyer ☐ Disciple ☐ Robbers

Quizzes train scanning skills and it is useful discussing this strategy with children.

Reading aloud is another strategy to be used with children (Barton, 2006); helps with fluency and intonation; also helps to assess pronunciation. But this must be done with caution: children must have gone through it and made sense of it. Only then should they be asked to read aloud. If they have not understood the text we cannot expect a good pronunciation and intonation, and demoralization could be one of the results. One first step would be teacher reading it before asking then to do likewise; this gives them “time to grapple with the meaning and are aided by the teacher’s intonation” (Barton, 2006: 96).

4.2 Writing activities

There are several general writing strategies and among the main ones we can enumerate these (Axelrod & Cooper, 2010): Cueing the reader; Narrating; Describing; Defining; Classifying; Comparing and contrasting; Arguing; Analyzing (visuals, realia, audios…); Designing documents. Most of these are also categories for speaking productions by the children. And we have different kinds of writing: letters, single words only, short sentences, long sentences; we can use form or paragraphs… Any case, an essential part of writing is conveying a message to somebody. It can be a message to myself (when I write personal notes as a reminder of something) but we have a message and a receiver. From this point of view, some activities that we have proposed for reading shouldn’t be categorized as writing: completing gaps in a sentence, correct the wrong words, taking notes for listening, ordering jumbled words or sentences, writing short answers in reading comprehension or listening, etc. These are activities for reading and listening (receptive skills) but not properly writing – productive activities.

Getting children into writing is, perhaps, the hardest work among the four sills, especially with boys (Barton, 2006). Motivating them in the process is the key for good results and once achieved, engagement raises, triggering an ascendant trend. Finding efficiently motivating activities is key for success. We won’t ask them to write an essay, but rather short sentences and types of tasks at their reach that could result in motivation rather than demoralizing them.

The result of children’s writing is a piece of text, no matter the format. It is usually on paper but word

processors are becoming more a more usual, especially in Secondary education. For the Primary stage, handwriting should be preferred for the sake of consolidating the graph motor skills. Giving feedback to pupils on his own results is an essential part of the learning progress. Emphasizing their achievements though correction should also be taken into account, transforming a usually demotivating feedback into an encouraging activity. To do so, correcting should go beyond marking

into teaching students what a correct writing would have been and giving them the opportunity for rewriting and improving their texts. If we are to go beyond this, letting children correct themselves is a plus. In order to do so, we need a clear system for correcting written texts. Many proposals can be found and most of them are acceptable. We suggest a combination of two models of correction marks that can be found in Anexxe II (Warriner, 1995) (Cassany, 2000). Care must be taken in correction, because, as Phillips reminds us, “it is important to make children feel that you appreciate their work and are not simply looking for mistakes in their English (1993:58).

Given a closed well-known set of correction marks, children will understand quite well what was perfectible in their writing assignments. Such a set of marks could be displayed on a noticeboard or any other visible place in the classroom for helping pupils. The lack of this mechanism reduces the correction of written texts to a mere grading procedure. It’s frequent to see many texts with just a grade on it, paragraphs crossed over with no hint of the reason, and so on. Establishing and using a set of correction marks that are simple, easy to use and understand, helps the children see what the mistake was and a way to transform it into a well written text (Cassany, 2000). Correction marks are especially useful when a portfolio assessment system is established, as we will suggest for our project. Using this marks will help go beyond summative into formative assessment (Capel, Leask, & Turner, 2005). Correction, anyway, shouldn’t be limited to writing; rather, it is convenient for all skills and most of activities. Teachers should predict errors, consider ways of correcting errors, list them and practice correction techniques. Correction involves if, why, when, what, how and who should do the correction (Vale & Feunteun, 1995).

We will offer a range of types of writing activities covering its two sub-skill: accuracy and communication (Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams, Melanie, 2005). When we ask children to use capital letters when appropriate, full stops, choose connectors such as ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘because’ and so on, we are seeking accuracy. On the contrary, if we ask them to write a sentence comparing two characters, expressing an opinion, writing a new ending or narrating a personal experience, we focus on communication. Today, more emphasis is put on the second skill, but the first should not be forgotten. May be in past times excessive attention was given to accuracy (orthography, syntax and grammar) and communicative aspects were set aside. This is not so any more.

Together with the previous distinction between accuracy and communication, writing activities can be closed or open (Phillips, 1993) or in other words, controlled practice activities in which teacher or materials limit the language to be used or freer activities such as discussions, sharing, comparing, retelling, exchanging experiences and so on (Vale & Feunteun, 1995) (Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams, Melanie, 2005). In first and second cycles of the stage, controlled practice activities like drills, linking names to pictures and all of this kind are more appropriate. Sixth graders could find it demotivating as very easy tasks for them is a deterrent of engagement. Combining both types activities and progression from controlled to freer tasks is also a way of scaffolding in the tough way to writing.

Writing, especially when it is a bit more ambitious than short sentences, has several stages that could help if shown to children. According to Mehisto, Marsh & Frigols give us these (2008:214-216):

- Brainstorming (gather ideas, no matter if not well connected)

- Making notes. More ambitious than brainstorming

- Planning: putting order into notes and ideas.

- Drafting. No accuracy still needed.

- Editing. Children try to do a final wording and form.

- Proof-reading.

One variant for brainstorming is going a bit forward and build a mind-map. This technique can be defined as “the creation of detailed brainstorm plans to map the contents of the mind making use of color, shapes, images and so on” (Cowley, The A to Z of teaching, 2004, pág. 74). Basically, it is a way or organizing ideas; it is useful for reflection and analysis of events, contexts, problems. As writing is written thinking and analysis, mind-mapping our ideas prepare us in the task of thinking before putting ideas on a sheet (Buzán, 2004). I have personally used brainstorming and mental maps for preparing an essay with Secondary students. Mental maps are a more powerful tool for preparing it, especially in the case of girls. Asking pupils to begin writing out of nothing is stressing for them and frustrating for the teacher. Some of them will ask: “But… what do I have to say?”

Despite that, many children pretend to begin with the end, editing from the start. We teachers should encourage our children to begin with brainstorming and notes, time-lines for stories, list of characters, events, etc. Some tools like a story maps are helpful to organize ideas and notes (Taberski, 2000) (Wright, 2009). We have selected a very simple and easy-to-use story map for our project (see Anexxe III). Teaching the process of writing, beginning with easy tasks and ending up with editing and proofreading is, also, a way of scaffolding; it is more important to do this when children have more difficulties at school. During my stay at school as a trainee, my tutor showed me the effectiveness of beginning with brainstorming, making a list of characters, taking notes, drawing, drafting and, also, proof reading. Children in the classroom who were above the average in most subjects were able to do good writing with no aid or previous stages; it was those with more need who benefited more from the process.

Some suggestions for writing activities are these:

- A character – role chart from which sentences are written:

Robbers Priest Samaritan

Was/were traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho No Yes Yes

Was not accepted by Jews. No Yes

Was compassionate No No Yes

He became neighbor of other person No No Yes

We ask children to write a sentence per row following a model:

Example sentence: The robbers and the priest were not compassionate, but the Samaritan was.

- Labeling characters or pictures with adjectives. A closed list of features or adjectives can be shown and children are asked to ascribe them to characters; telling then that it isn’t a close series of qualities is a variant.

- Writing statements from a set of words. We can ask students to use certain verbal tenses, passive voice, and so on.

- Grammar and vocabulary exercises. Most of the exercises for teaching grammar or preparing for examinations are made up of lots of activities that involve a piece of writing. Accuracy and correct use of grammar areas are their main goals. Introducing this tasks into our lessons will help understanding of the parable as well as language learning. Our teaching shouldn’t pivot around it, but a certain percentage of them should be considered. We should target A2 level and many materials are available (Vince, 2010) (Dymond, Kenny, & French, 2005) (Murphy, 2007) (McCarthy & O'Dell, 1999). We will look at these books for inspiration and use their models to compose our own exercises to work verb tenses, reported speech and passive voice using vocabulary and topics from Gospel parables and short stories.

- Completing a story or changing it (this can be done with almost all the parables / stories):

o Imagine and write a new end. Example: suppose the innkeeper refuses to take care of the man who was attacked and…

o Imagine a previous story. Write a personal biography of the Samaritan: job, family,

house…

o Write a new title for the parable.

o Introduce a new character that changes the course of the events.

- Describe a situation that is similar the story of the parable. Point out differences and in what it is like.

Retelling a personal experience (actually happened to a child or imagined; or with a well-known person as main character) linked someway to a parable will combine both verb tenses and reported speech. In order to help retelling, i.e., language productive skills, it is advisable empowering then with some easy-to-use tools pack. Such a kind of kit should include: