3 Writing Across the Curriculum
‘Making links between curriculum subjects and areas of learning can deepen pupils’ understanding by providing opportunities to reinforce and enhance learning. It can enrich the curriculum and support achievement and enjoyment.'
Literacy Across the Curriculum (2006)
It is often easier for student teachers to identify writing opportunities across the curriculum if, instead of starting with literacy objectives, they start with the content of different subjects. Many primary student teachers have a subject specialism other than English and I have found them particularly responsive to activities that require them to start from a unit of work in their own subject. In this way they are able to demonstrate that they already have a great deal of knowledge about how to provide purposeful and meaningful contexts for writing in the classroom.
This section:
- Describes activities to help student teachers make cross curricular links
- Extends the use of writing frames to link literacy with other subjects
- Introduces multimodal texts as part of the writing repertoire.
For this activity the student teachers are asked to prepare a short presentation describing a unit of work from their specialist subject area and identify the language and literacy links within the work. The presentations can be organised on a carousel basis with subject specialist tutors taking part and providing feedback.
As the group watch their colleagues’ presentations they are asked:
- Can you identify real purposes for writing?
- Do you see your colleagues modelling different kinds of talk?
- How would this support pupils’ writing?
- How could you make links into your literacy teaching?
This activity proves very useful. Many student teachers use drama and role-play, make suggestions about teaching geography, history or science, for example, through literature and identify writing opportunities in a range of texts types including diaries, letters, instructional texts.
“It’s much easier looking at literacy from this angle!”
Writing frames across the curriculum
- Writing frames and graphic organisers have become familiar as scaffolds and provide a very pragmatic way of making links between work completed in literacy and work in other subjects. This sort of activity fits well into the sessions where students explore the EXEL Project in some depth and consider the thinking and research underpinning the EXIT model (Wray and Lewis, 1997)
The purpose of this activity is to involve student teachers in the selection and retrieval of information from a set of sources, encouraging them to identify the necessary skills.
You will need to provide resources so the group can examine the different texts which might be used, for example for a local study or the topic ‘Britain since 1930’. These might be facsimile documents, photographs, postcards, maps, newspaper articles, posters, diaries, leaflets from museums/places of local interest. They will also need KWL and QADS grids. You can find examples by clicking here. These provide scaffolds for writing, making links between work in literacy and other subjects. Raymond Briggs’ book Ethel and Ernest and Michael Foreman’s War Boy are both splendid resources for biographical work in history.
The tutor leads a shared activity to work towards writing an information sheet about the local area or a piece of writing in role as someone who lived during the period. The tutor also models the use of KWL and QADS grids to introduce student teachers to appropriate strategies for the task. Set group activities which allow student teachers to read the source materials and select relevant information for their own writing using the grids.
Completing an activity of this sort encourages the group to reflect actively on the process of reading for information and on the links between literacy and other curricular areas. It can also lead to sessions on reading using the Reading Assessment Focuses.
Following a discussion of Activity 3.2, it is helpful if the student teachers can spend time looking at samples of pupils’ work using writing frames from a study unit (there are some examples in Wray and Lewis but more up-to-date examples would be good) and identify various stages of the learning process. How did the pupils use writing frames? Were they useful? What aspects of the learning and teaching process can we identify in their work? How has the learning been scaffolded?
There are examples of Key Stages 2 and 3 pupils using writing frames in different curriculum areas in Making Progress in Writing (Bearne, 2002). The Standards Site has some useful case studies of writing in different curriculum areas here.
A graphic outline is a way of drawing attention to the features of layout and format in non-fiction books. It involves a close scrutiny and discussion of the quality and relevance of illustrations, the complexity of any tables or graphs and the use of headings and sub-headings. There is huge potential for using this simple activity to link works in literacy with subjects across the curriculum.
The tutor leads a shared activity with the student teachers to create an outline of the layout features of the text which can either be displayed on a flipchart or, ideally, on the IWB.
- Choose an appropriate non-fiction text linked to the pupils’ learning and interest. A double spread is useful.
- Draw and label the different parts of the text on the flipchart. Use the appropriate language and draw attention to purpose – as shown below.
- Group activities: student teachers create graphic outlines from various non-fiction texts and discuss the potential for cross-curricular links.
Key Issues from Activity 3.4
A crucial point to make is that pupils need to be creators of multimodal texts, particularly since the renewed Framework and the Key Stage 3 English Programme of Study (2007) require them to write ‘on paper and on screen’. The group might be asked: How can an activity like this support the process of pupils making their own multimodal texts? This activity allows student teachers to explore how technology is creating opportunities for new ways of using language and understand the concepts of multimodality and multiliteracies.
The UKLA/QCA Publications More than Words I (2004) and More than Words II (2005) provide useful examples, key ideas and ways into assessing and responding to pupils’ multimodal texts. Taking these ideas further, Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing by Eve Bearne and Helen Wolstencroft (2007) provides good support for planning, teaching and assessing multimodal texts.
There is enormous potential for ICT links: pupils can be involved in designing their own double-spreads and making choices as writers about how to present information effectively. The Children’s Compass at www.Britishmuseum.org is an excellent resource, with facilities for downloading colourful and accessible information on a range of topics.
References
Bearne, E. (2002) Making Progress in Writing. London: Routledge Falmer
Bearne, E. and Wolstencroft, H. (2007) Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing: Multimodal literacy 5-11. London: SAGE/UKLA
United Kingdom Literacy Association/Qualifications and Assessment Authority (2004) More than Words: multimodal texts in the classroom London: QCA
United Kingdom Literacy Association/Qualifications and Assessment Authority (2005) More than Words 2: Creating stories on page and screen London: QCA
Further reading
Burn, A. and Durran, J. (2007) Media Literacy in Schools: Practice, Production and Progression, London: Paul Chapman Publishing
Dyson, A. H. (1997) Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy, New York: Teachers College Press
Evans, J. (ed) Literacy Moves On: Using Popular Culture, New Technologies and Critical Literacy in the Primary Classroom. London: David Fulton
Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T (1996) Reading Images: the grammar of visual design, London, Routledge
Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication, London, Arnold
Lankshear, C., Snyder, I. and Green, B. (2000) Teachers and Technoliteracy: managing literacy, technology and learning in schools, New South Wales, Allen and Unwin
Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (2000) Literacy and Popular Culture, London: Sage Publications
Palmer, S. (2002) How To Teach Writing Across the Curriculum. London: David Fulton Publishers
United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and the Primary National Strategy (PNS) (2004) Raising Boys’ Achievements in Writing, Reading: Primary National Strategy
Unsworth, L. (2001) Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum: Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice, Buckingham: Open University Press
 
| 
