Explanatory Text
Date: 26 October 2016
Learning Outcomes:
• In shared writing and independently plan, compose, edit and refine explanatory texts, using reading as a source, focusing on clarity, conciseness and impersonal style.
• Select ideas to include in own text to suit purpose and audience
• Work with a partner to discuss and improve each other’s work, taking the roles of authors and editors
• Realise that writers ask questions of themselves and identify ways to improve their writing, e.g. “Is this what I meant to say?” “Is it relevant?”
• Plan for and create a published text that reflects the intended purpose and needs of the audience.
• Organise ideas and paragraphs in logical sequence
• Use all basic punctuation that is mostly correct, e.g. when punctuation dialogue, commas, question marks, colon, and semi colon
• Engage in teacher demonstration of how to research and plan a page for a reference book on one aspect of a class topic using shared note-making and writing of the page, using an impersonal style, hypothetical language (if...then, might, when the...) and causal and temporal connections (e.g. while, during, after, because, as a result, due to, only when, so) as appropriate.
Tasks:
·Students chose one body system to learn more about how it works. They had to research the system based on four guiding subheadings:
o Interesting facts
o What is it?
o How does it work?
o Why do we need it?
·Students collected key words and phrases on a graphic organiser, then created compound or complex sentences from them. They wrote a rough draft, which had to be edited and revised before typing their final draft on a software document.
Assessment Tool: Rubric
Reflection: This was hard when I have to find the key word or phrases.