Levels 5 and 6

Achievement Objectives

Written language: Writing

Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Examples

Example 1

Achievement Objectives
Expressive writing; poetic writing; transactional writing: exploring language; thinking critically

Teaching and Learning
Context: exploring personal experiences

• Students hear and read a range of texts describing personal experiences, such as extracts from biography, travel narrative, feature articles, and letters.
• Students write informally in their personal journals about their own feelings, based on the recollection of a person or experience.
• Students discuss their recollections in groups to clarify their ideas.
• Students shape their text in a form of their choice, to share the feelings associated with that memory. First drafts are discussed in pairs and groups, edited, and reworked for presentation to their group.
• Students now draw on the same recollection to write a short article, feature, or letter to inform their audience or set out a point of view that arises from their experience.

Assessment

• Students compare their three written accounts, identifying and noting their choices of material and language features according to the different functions.
• The teacher assesses the two shaped pieces for appropriateness and effectiveness.

Links With Other Strands
Listening, Reading

Example 2

Achievement Objectives
Poetic writing: exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: writing a poem

• Students listen to and read a number of poems in different forms which have highly descriptive language, and express aspects of a universal theme.
• Each group looks at a different form, for example, haiku, lyric, ballad, or sonnet, for characteristics of the form, such as imagery, rhyme, word order, and other language features.
• The groups report to the class on their findings, and the class discusses the ways in which language is used in poetry, considering the topic, purpose, context, and implied audience.
• They write a group poem using one of the forms discussed.

Assessment

• The groups read their poems and evaluate them, using knowledge gained from earlier discussions.
• Groups share poems with others, responding to each other's ideas and choice of language features.
• Students write their own poems.
• They assess their work with the teacher in terms of ideas and effective use of language.
• Students record an evaluation of their poem and their control of the writing process in their log.

Links With Other Strands
Reading, Speaking, Listening

Example 3

Achievement Objectives
Transactional writing; poetic writing: exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: studying the language of advertising

• Students plan an advertising and publicity campaign for the school drama production. They look closely at the formats and language features of written and visual texts, such as theatre programmes, posters, and local newspapers. They use journals or learning logs to comment on the language features they identify, such as imperatives, truncated sentences, repetition, and imagery.
• Students decide on the appropriate media for their campaign, such as brochure, poster, newsletter, and radio.
• Each group member is responsible for the concept script for each medium and develops a draft text for the group to rework into the campaign.
• Special attention is paid to appropriate choice of language.

Assessment

• In their groups, students assess themselves and their classmates for the overall effectiveness of their campaign and the effectiveness of the draft texts.
• Students then collaborate in reworking the drafts into final products. The teacher observes and notes their understanding of the different choices for different media.

Links With Other Strands
Reading, Listening, Speaking, Viewing, Presenting
Related example in another strand at the same level: Presenting, Example 3.

Example 4

Achievement Objectives
Transactional writing: processing information; exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: investigating the language of campaigning

• After brainstorming ideas and planning how to gather material related to a political or special interest campaign, groups of students gather examples of different genres, such as letters to the editor, petitions, or campaign songs.
• The teacher also provides texts from, for example, campaigns in New Zealand history, or from literature, and the class discusses the language features and conventions of each genre.
• In groups, students compare two examples from their own collection for presenting to the class.
• Each group selects a current issue of concern. Within the group, each student prepares one em, such as an article, speech, bumper sticker, advertisement, or song, designed to persuade others to join their campaign.

Assessment

• Groups display their campaign material for peer assessment.
  
• Students present, for assessment by the teacher, an anthology of several texts, with a commentary on the language and effectiveness of each.

Links With Other Strands
Reading, Speaking, Listening, Presenting