More on learning tasks. Selecting writing topics to engage writers- Murray Gadd

Some direct quotes that resonate with me after reading the article: What does an effective teacher of writing do that makes a difference to student achievement?
MURRAY GADD

"An example of student involvement in task construction involved a teacher inquiring of his or her
students, “What things have we been doing lately that we might write about? Have a think...” When the students decided on a possible topic of interest the teacher asked about purpose and audience, “Who might want to read about this?” and “What do you want to tell them about this? Would you be writing to report or to persuade or to recount...?” The students wrote because they had something to say (which they had decided on) and the text type to be utilised emerged from the topic rather
than the other way around. The topic (and its purpose- related task) drove the lesson".

• Differentiated levels of direct instruction to diverse learners
• When deconstructing exemplars the best results come when the teacher used active demonstrating Use 'think alouds' "Through active demonstrating, teachers not only instructed students at the word, sentence, or whole text level, or a combination of all, but they also revealed themselves to be active members of a writing community and to be problem-solvers and risk-takers as mistakes were made and corrected."

Effective teachers question, prompt, and respond 

effectively for deep, metacognitive, text-related 

thinking by their students.

Says

 

it's best

 

for 

teachers  to focus more on asking “how?” 

and “why?” questions (such as, “Why do you want to use personification in your description? How will it help the reader get a clear picture in their mind?’) rather than “what?” questions (such as, “What is personification?”). etc

Workshops best

Keep ging with our workshops for writing and flexible groupings which we are doing in the hub on what we see as an identified need.

Encourage students to write collaboratively from time to time whether this is similar levels or pedagogical concept of tuakana–teina in which “more expert” students are paired with “less expert” students to foster expertise and empathy within students- this is working well in the hub where many of our reluctant writers enjoy writing on a shared piece of writing. - Actually this is working too well in some of the students and we are having to ask them not to collaborate only so we can get more of an idea of what skills the individual has when they independently write.