Writing at Key Stage 2 and 3

2 The Range of Writing

How do we support student teachers to get to grips with the range of text types they will need to teach whilst maintaining a balance between writing as a process and a product?

A powerful place to start is with the student teachers’ own knowledge about language. This section is designed to help make their implicit knowledge about language explicit by:

• Identifying the range and variety of writing.
• Exploring the tensions around genre theory and the place of pre-prepared materials

Exploring text types

The following activity requires student teachers to listen to a variety of text types and identify language and text features. Listening, rather than looking in the first instance, helps the group focus on language features. They can look at the texts later in order to refine their analysis of different text types.

Key Issues from Activity 2.1

As the student teachers discuss their findings I point out that:

• They already know about word, sentence, text level cues and, as effective language users, they use this knowledge automatically.
• They already know about the range of text types and different text structures.
• As teachers they will need to make this knowledge explicit to the pupils.

I then ask the supplementary question:

• Did it help to talk to others about your knowledge? Would it have been easier, or more difficult, to do the activity without collaboration?

This provides the chance to highlight the role of collaborative talk in learning.

Developing Activity 2.1

I point out to the group that as effective language users they already have sophisticated skills of linguistic analysis and ask them to consider:

• What skills or knowledge about language do you feel you still need to develop to help your teaching?

This can lead to discussions about text and sentence grammar which can provide useful information about student teachers’ worries and strengths when planning specific sessions on these features.

Further Activity

• Consider your comments and the grids from the first activity. What helped you to distinguish between the fiction and non-fiction texts?
• Could you distinguish within the category of fiction? What types of fiction were read? How did you know?
• For Key Stage 2 student teachers, using the renewed Framework for Literacy, identify the range of narrative fiction taught across KS1 & 2. Visit, The Standards Site, for example, and click on Narrative for several year groups.
• For Key Stage 3 student teachers, use either the English Programme of Study Key Stage 3 Range and Content Writing to discuss the ways in which the structures of different types of fiction text might be approached in the classroom or refer to the Key Stage 3 Strategy for Literacy Across the Curriculum (see example below).

Activity 2.2
Non-Fiction Writing

This activity is designed to allow student teachers to explore the six categories of non-fiction texts, as identified in the Literacy Framework, and to begin to develop a critical and informed approach. However, genre theory is controversial because texts cannot always be compartmentalised and because new texts are emerging as technologies grow and new forms of writing develop. This activity is designed to introduce and explore some of these issues.

The group work in pairs and are given a selection of non-fiction texts across a range of genres.

• Student teachers are given an outline of the six main non-fiction text types*
• The activity requires them to consider the language features and text forms of each text type and broadly place each one into one of the six main types.

* You can find these in:

Extending Literacy: Children reading and writing non-fiction (Wray and Lewis, 1997)
Alternatively there is a useful table in Making Progress in Writing (Bearne, 2002:123) and some helpful definitions in English for Primary Years (Eyres, 2007:126 ff).

For Key Stage 2 the PNS Grammar for Writing or the PNS strand tracker Non-Fiction Texts has details of each year’s objectives for the different text types. It is available as a PDF by clicking here.

After the student teachers have completed the Activity I ask them to reflect on whether they found any difficulties and to list them.

EXAMPLES OF TEXT TYPES USED IN ACTIVITY 1

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Key Issues from Activity 2.2

The text types the student teachers have been working with are examples from everyday life – advertisements, pamphlets, newspaper reports, graphic novels, comics, video/DVD cases, recount texts, explanatory texts etc. These texts will often not be pure in terms of genre; texts rarely are. Discussion around this will need to balance the value of explicitly teaching the range of text types across KS2 and 3, with the dangers of instrumental ‘check list’ teaching.

As well as more recognised information, explanation or persuasive texts, student teachers should consider texts drawn from pupils’ ‘real worlds’; texts from home and community, and those with national and international perspectives. How can these provide starting points when planning units of work?

The key issue is to encourage and support student teachers as they make links between the texts at the centre of a school’s English planning and the texts in the world outside school. Using texts from pupils’ out of school experience can be a way of capturing attention, motivating pupils and drawing them into a teaching unit. It is also important that student teachers select a range of texts from different categories: media, multimodal, visual texts, literature and everyday texts. For example watching a clip of a TV ‘soap’ such as Friends or Eastenders can be a powerful way of introducing work on characters, plot shapes and patterns, or a range of non-fiction text types.

The notion of what constitutes ‘a text’ is changing rapidly and student teachers need to have a broad view of this. Written, visual and digital texts provide various opportunities for students to explore appropriate print, non-print and electronic forms of texts that could be included in any unit of work. In many ways the selection and inclusion of these forms of texts and everyday texts such as letters, emails, speeches, artwork and interviews proves the greatest challenge for our student teachers.

The temptation is to work with published material which has already linked objectives and selected texts or text extracts. The challenge is to make connections between a variety of texts in different modes and from a range of contexts, make links with learning objectives and create meaningful and creative writing opportunities. Fortunately, it is a challenge that many student teachers meet with great success. It can help to think about ‘events’ in school – cultural events or festivals, community events or author/illustrator studies. These can provide starting points for student teachers to begin thinking about how they can include texts from different modes – spoken, written and visual – in their planning. (See Section Four – Planning for Writing)

One excellent resource for supporting teaching non-fiction is Margaret Mallett’s Active Encounters: Inspiring young readers and writers of non-fiction 4-11 (2007) UKLA Minibooks series available from www.ukla.org.

Ian Eyres’ book English for Primary and Early Years is another very good resource for analysing and describing genre and text types.

References

Bearne, E. (2002) Making Progress in Writing, London: Routledge.

Eyres, I. (2007) English for Primary and Early Years: Developing Subject Knowledge 2nd edition London: SAGE Published in Association with The Open University.

Mallett, M. (2007) Active Encounters: Inspiring young readers and writers of non-fiction 4-11, UKLA Minibooks series available from www.ukla.org

Wray, D. and Lewis, M. (1997) Extending Literacy: Children reading and writing non-fiction

Further reading

Grainger, T. (2004) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Language and Literacy, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Maun, I. & Myhill, D. (2005) ‘Text as Design, Writers as Designers’, English in Education, 39 (2).

Sharples, M. (1999) How We Write: writing as creative design, London: Routledge.