Q Learning to write

As soon as your pupils have acquired the necessary motor skills you may start involving them into controlled and guided activities. Controlled activities develop the ability to copy, which is often accompanied with practising or testing reading, grammar and vocabulary. According to the Russian ELT Educational Standard by the time pupils finish Primary school they should be able to write short texts neatly and legibly.

In “Enjoy English 2” (M.Biboletova et al) we come across the following activity:

Заполни таблицу названиями месяцев:

Days	Months
31 days
30 days
28 or 29 days

A picture of a calendar with names of months  

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Apart from practising copying children have to find information which adds to their overall knowledge of the world.

Here is another example of a copying activity taken from the young learners’ course book “Millie 2”:

Complete the sentences about the robot. Then draw it. Закончи предложения о роботе. Нарисуй его.

This is my robot. It’s got 1____________2 ___________. It can 3_________________________. It’s got 1___________ 2___________. It can 3_________________________. It likes 4_________________________.	[AW An empty frame for drawing a robot // рамочка для рисования робота с заглавием My Robot ]
long short big small	legs arms hands feet	cook swim clean the room walk jump	roller-skating dancing ice-cream music English books

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This exercise allows for developing simple copying skills, reading comprehension and stimulates child’s creativity.

In Guided activities pupils are given the opportunity to make decisions about what to write, but they still need support (see Chapter 1 about scaffolding). You may try various types of support: pictures, tables, unfinished or jumbled sentences, gapped stories, questions, key words, etc. Controlled and guided activities go hand in hand as they develop accurate and meaningful writing and form a basis for developing competent writing skills. Look at the activity taken from the course book “Millie 3”:

Look at the picture. Then complete the Lost Pet notice. Посмотри на рисунок. Заполни объявление о пропаже питомца.

A picture of a dog    

Lost Pet

Please help us find __________. His name’s _____________.

Description:

Eyes -________, nose -____________, ears -_____________,

hair-_________, legs-___________, arms_____________.

Robby can _________________________________________

He likes____________________________________________

If you know where he is, please call me on

tel. no. ________________. Ask for_____________.

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By appealing to the child’s emotions the activity develops imagination and teaches meaningful writing. As the picture gives only partial support young learners have the opportunity to express themselves while making their choice.

We would like to add one more example of guided writing:

Complete the invitation. Заполни приглашение:

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When you organise an English Party you might ask your pupils to write an invitation card for their parents and friends. Thus, there is the real need for written communication. It also teaches etiquette and gives children opportunity to express themselves in a creative way (to add drawings, to glue pictures, etc see also Chapter 11 about organising a Writing Corner)

Дата добавления: 2015-05-29