Purpose: This learning module incorporates blended learning where students interact face-to-face as well as in the online forum. It also involves two writing projects where students give and receive feedback using a structured rubric.

This initial activity is designed to engage students in writing camp through valuing their prior knowledge and linking to their life worlds. It also introduces the year 3 students to writing comments and being active knowledge makers, contributing ideas to our "Bright Sparks" community.

Teaching Tips:

As students come into the room, get them to log into Scholar. Year 4 students can buddy up with year 3 students and guide them through the process of logging in, setting up an avatar and sending a message to a peer. Year 4 students can also update their avatars.

While students are doing this, emphasise the importance of selecting non-racist, sexist or violent images, being safe in online environments, supporting each other and not bullying their peers.

Once all students have set up their accounts, invite them to the front of the room to gain an overview of Scholar, followed by a reading and discussion of the mentor text.

The Best Pastime Mentor Text

Students can then write comments, listing as many pastimes as possible that may become the focus of their persuasive writing project. Give students time to discuss the pastime they will write about.

The Writing Project

What is the best pastime in the world? Give reasons with evidence (examples, anecdotes, facts) for your opinion. Write 300-500 words. Include 1-2 images to make your writing even more interesting and persuasive.

Start the writing project before the lesson. Students can then log into CGScholar and click on the "Work Request" in their Notifications. This will take them to Creator to start their work.

They should add their title for their favourite pastime and then record some dot points of their reasons and examples. This becomes their plan. Students should save this plan as a new version. Then they can expand on their dot points in the next version.

When students start their projects, get them to look around the Toolbar, especially "About this Work" and also the rubric in "Feedback".

Year 4 students can support year 3 students once again. A year 4 student can model on the white board for the whole class first.

They write their persuasive texts gradually over the next three lessons. Include some explicit teaching of text structure and language features in each lesson based on Updates 2 and 3. On day 4, they submit their works for peer review and give feedback. They complete this and revise their works for publication in the fifth lesson.

Purpose: This update explores the mentor text, a model of a persuasive text, in more depth so that students respond, discuss and identify the structure and a persuasive technique (reason and example).

TEXT ANNOTATION STRATEGY

Support students to annotate the text. After the first reading, ask students to ? and Underline. Ask them to share their annotations with a partner.

Then model how to identify R (Reasons), followed by Evidence (examples)).  Finally, circle the connectives. You may have to read  parts of the text a couple of times, telling students what to annotate.

Emphasise a key understanding that persuasive texts provide reasons and evidence (examples).

PERSUASIVE TEXT STRUCTURE

A text is organised into paragraphs following a PEC structure. The length of a paragraph ranges from one sentence to many sentences (e.g. 3-10). 

After students have written their paragraphs and commented, go back to the mentor text and in the margins, students annotate the structure of the whole text.

Students write P for the Point Paragraph, E for the E Paragraphs and C for the C paragraphs. They write an O for the E paragraph that has an opposing opinion. Then, they check to see that each paragraph is doing its job - it should be annotated with an R, Es and Cs!

Purpose: In this update, the teacher guides students to identify persuasive techniques in the mentor text and then to incorporate at least three techniques in their own texts. 

Teaching Tips

1. Rhetorical Questions

Students watch the video about rhetorical questions. Then look at the first paragraph in Bicycle Riding:The Best Pastime and highlight the rhetorical question. There is another rhetorical question in the third paragraph. Highlight it. Then students add at least one rhetorical question to their writing projects (if they don't already have one).

2. Repetition and Triples

Repetition is a way to emphasise a point. Repetition is a word or a phrase used 2 or more times close together or following a pattern such as the sentence at the end of each E paragraph. Students find the examples in the mentor text, Bicycle Riding:The Best Pastime. Then add repetition to their writing projects to emphasise an important point. 

3. Modality

Another persuasive technique is modality. Mode means "method" or "the way something is done". Modal verbs are verbs that tell us the mode in which something should be done. Strong modal verbs are should, ought, must need, would, have while low modal verbs are can could, may, might.

There are also connectives and adverbs such as "definitely" or "probably" which indicate high and low modality. These words show whether you are certain or unsure about your opinion. To be really persuasive, you need to show certainty and that you really believe in your opinion.

Note that weak modal verbs are only used in the EO paragraph. In this way you make opposing arguments weaker and easier to dismiss.

Students circle all the modal verbs, connectives and adverbs. Then, add some modal verbs to their writing projects.

4. Direct Verbs

​Yet another persuasive technique is where you speak directly to the reader and use a direct verb (also called the imperative - a bit like ordering someone to do something). There are 2 examples in Bicycle Riding:The Best Pastime:

• Ride a bike so you can discover nature. (paragraph 4)
• So ride a bike. (C paragraph)

Students place a double line under all the examples of speaking directly to the reader.  Then, add direct verbs to their writing projects.

5. Exclamations

Bicycle Riding:The Best Pastime uses exclamation marks in the final paragraph. This is another persuasive technique to influence the reader. There are two other uses of exclamation marks for students to find. They put a hash symbol (#) in the margin next to them. Then, add an exclamation mark to their writing projects. Advise students not to overuse them - no more than 3 or 4.

6. Anecdotes

An anecdote is short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. They can be used to expand on examples. There are 3 personal anecdotes in Bicycle Riding:The Best Pastime. 

I rode to the local park and back home which is 5 kilometres. This is further than the 2 kilometres I could ride when I started riding so I am definitely much fitter now.

When I was riding at the local park I saw lots of flowers, trees, lizards and birds, including a crimson Rosella. Its colours were so beautiful, my mum took a photo.

One time, a dog ran in front of me on the footpath and I fell off my bike. My knee was bleeding so I had to walk home.

7. Extension: Emotional Language and "Double Pronged" sentences are included in the "Live Wires" learning module for years 5 and 6 students.

Purpose: This update aims to engage students through listening to and responding to a great narrative. It enables students to think critically about what they have learnt about narrative and persuasive texts, and how they are the same and different, and developing conceptual understanding of the genres of argument and narrative. This supports them to transfer learning from one set of learning activities to another.It also helps students to generate their own ideas for a narrative.

The narrative mentor text is central to learning about narratives.

Essex Mentor Text

Teaching Tips:

• Engage students through a prediction based on the five word story: Live and Learn: What Essex Learnt.
• After reading the narrative, students discuss their reactions - prompt students to discuss their emotional reaction to the story (identification, empathy, antipathy). Students might share some of their experiences of smoke and bushfires. Note if any students have been traumatised by bush fire experiences, choose another mentor text. Otherwise, this text provides a valuable opportunity for students to debrief their experiences.
• Next, students should focus on what makes this narrative a good/great one. Key ideas can then be shared with the whole class by recording ideas on the Venn Diagram. This will enable students to connect what they are learning about narratives to what they already know about persuasive texts. 
• Print out the Venn Diagram (below) and enlarge to A3. Ideas can be recorded on the A3 sheet as a whole class.
• In completing the Venn Diagram, prompt students to focus on how the author hooks the reader,  and interesting language (wow words, similes, triples) and sentences - Cameron, S. & Dempsey, L. (2013). The Writing Book: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Auckland: S&L publishing, p. 70).

The Writing Project

Write a narrative about a lesson learnt. It could be about yourself or another person or animal. It can be based on a real or imaginary experience. Include at least one image to illustrate your narrative. Add your 5 word title. Write 300-500 words.

• Start the writing project before the lesson. Students can then log into CGScholar and click on the "Work Request" in their Notifications. This will take them to Creator to start their work.

• They should add their five word story and add dot points with more ideas. This becomes their plan. Students should save this plan as a new version. Then they can expand on their dot points in the next version.

• When students start their projects, get them to look around the Toolbar, especially "About this Work" and also the rubric in "Feedback".

Venn Diagram: Narrative and Persuasive Texts

• They write their narrative texts gradually over the next three lessons. Include some explicit teaching of text structure and language features in each lesson based on Updates 4 and 5. On day 4, they submit their works for peer review and give feedback. They complete this and revise their works for publication in the fifth lesson.

Purpose: Here students identify the structure of the narrative of the text they read in the initial activity and use it as a model for their own narratives. Students also start writing  orientations based on their Five Word Stories in update 4. They can use these when they start their writing projects. By sharing these in the Community discussion forum, they are seeing other student models of orientations which they can use to improve their own. 

Students also identify some language features such as connectives, wow words, similes and triples. As students work on their narratives, they learn more about narrative techniques, including description and dialogue. The focus on description through verbs shifts the emphasis away from adjectives.

Teaching Tips:

• Print a copy of the mentor text for each student before the lesson and provide highlighters and coloured pencils.​
• Work through the following activities gradually, allowing students to incorporate what they have learnt in their writing.

1. Language Features

Instructions for students:

• Circle all of the connectives. Hint: They are underlined for you. How many are there? Connectives help you to vary your sentences.
• Highlight 10 "Wow" words and share them with your partner. Count how many you had that were the same.
• There are two similes in the story. Circle them. Similes create exciting pictures in your mind. Can you imagine what the sound would be like in the following sentences which have a simile. Similes start with "like" or "as".

The children shrieked like meowing cats.
The sound was as loud as a squawking bird.

• There are 5 triples in the story. Highlight them too. Wow words, triples and similes can make your writing more exciting and descriptive.

2. Narrative Technique: ​Dialogue

Focus on the narrative technique of using dialogue as a tool to show character and to advance the sequence of events. Then ask students to look at the dialogue in the handout and work out the punctuation rules - capital letters, speech marks, full stops, commas, and new lines/paragraphs.

Instructions for students:

• Look at the dialogue. What are three rules that you notice for writing dialogue. Dialogue is a narrative technique.

3. Narrative Technique: ​Description

Essex Mentor Text-Description

By now the first copy of the mentor text will have so many annotations that it will be difficult for students to add more. Print a copy of this version for students. It has some different things bolded, underlined and italicised.

Instructions for students:

• Count up the "wow" verbs (Hint: They are bolded).
• There are 2 verbs with adverbs (Hint: They are in bold and italics).
• Then count up the adjectives (Hint: They are underlined).
• Note the 2 similes again - they are in italics.

Note: Verbs and adverbs, adjectives and similes are tools to include description in narrative writing. Verbs are the tools that really do the "heavy lifting" in description!

7.  Best Written Sentence 

Invite students to add ideas about what makes a great narrative to the Venn Diagram. Students can refer to this for the following summative activity on language features to justify their choice of what makes the best written sentence.

Instructions for students:

• Put a double line under what you think is the best written sentence in the story. Explain to your partner why you think it is good. Then talk to another pair and share your ideas in a Think-Pair-Square.

Extension: Add an update where students can comment about what they have or will include in their narratives.

Comment: What are at least  three things that you will include to make sure this is your best narrative ever. You can add more - keep on adding ideas until you run out. Read other students' comments and give feedback on 1-2.

Purpose: This reflection activity promotes student metacognition about what makes quality writing by reading and reflecting on other students’ writing.

Teaching Tips:

• Add more ideas to the Venn Diagram.
• Refer to the Analytics to see how students have performed.