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Uses an increasing understanding of the connections between oral, written, and visual language when creating texts.

What do I need to know?

Combining written and visual aspects of texts (reading)

Visuals are an integral part of many printed and electronic texts. Students need to learn about the purposes of visual features and the relationships between visual and written aspects of texts in order to comprehend and interpret such texts. For example, many diagrams present some of the information from the print in an abbreviated form. Students who are unfamiliar with this convention may not realise that they can often fill in the gaps in their understanding of a diagram by referring to the printed text that accompanies it. Before students read a new kind of text, teachers can discuss the ways in which it presents information (including visual ways) and help them link these techniques to familiar ways of presenting information.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9–13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2004. p.84.

Speaking and Writing – Exploring Language

What does it look like?

Example 1 - Discrimination because of non-conformity

Blade Runner and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are also similar because they both illustrate how societies are not very empathic to individuals that do not fit in. In Blade Runner the androids are not accepted into human society and are denied the right to live for more than four years even though they are essentially no different to the humans. This is shown when Deckard is given permission to kill the androids and does so without hesitation. Similarly, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the patients are locked away in a mental hospital so that society doesn't have to deal with them. Those who voluntarily isolate themselves in the hospital choose to stay there because they are unable to conform or fit into society.

Example 2

Internal Assessment Resource – In Their Words (Word 149KB)

 Extract from Task 2:

Work through your whole text making annotations identifying how you will use presentation techniques in specific places to help convey meaning:

• How could you incorporate inflection or shifts in your tone and variation in your pace? Your speed and tone or pitch should match your mood. You might speak quickly to help convey a excitement or tension, or speak slowly and deliberately to suggest determination or seriousness.
• How could you incorporate volume and emphasis to match your emotional state? Vary your volume. Make your voice boom out, or whisper, to match your feelings.
• How could you incorporate pausing? Pausing can develop a sense of expectation, importance or tension.
• How could you incorporate stance, movement or positioning? Draw in your audience by addressing them directly. Consider where you should stand. Block out how you should move within the space you will use. In a dramatic performance, how old and physically active is your character? How will this influence the way your character moves?
• How could you incorporate facial expression? As with your voice, use expressions and eye contact to reflect feelings and emotions. For example, you might look away or look down to convey feelings of self doubt or reflection.
• You could incorporate a prop or a item of costume suitable for a classroom performance or reading. If appropriate, you may be able to include lighting, set, music or other sound effects in your performance.

Example 3

Internal Assessment Resource – In Search Of (Word 311KB)

In their research report, the student uses an increasing understanding of the connections between oral, written, and visual language [for example, film, novel, poem] when creating a written research report on the topic of race relations as revealed in New Zealand literature.

Extract from Exemplar E:

My investigation examined race relations in New Zealand literature. The texts I chose gave a disturbing portrayal of this. A common theme of distrust, alcohol and violence carried through Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, Crooked Earth directed by Sam Pillsbury and Clenched Fist by Witi Ihimaera. Maori and Polynesians in my texts felt alienated. Racism fostered from childhood escalated to hatred as portrayed in Sons For The Return Home by Albert Wendt. Lastly, the theme of lost culture and heritage is featured in Sad Joke On A Marae by Apirana Taylor.

Creates a range of increasingly coherent, varied, and complex texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.
Ministry of Education, 2003a, p 136

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas.

Stage 1: Forming intentions

The writer:

• determines the purpose and audience
• chooses a topic and ideas
• finds and selects information.

Stage 2: Composing a text

The writer:

• selects the most appropriate content or ideas
• writes these ideas down, structuring and sequencing content appropriately
• chooses the most appropriate language for the purpose and the audience.

Stage 3: Revising

The writer:

• reviews the draft to ensure it meets the purpose and is appropriate for the audience
• modifies the writing as necessary
• attends to surface features such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Stage 4: Publishing

The writer:

• decides how to present the text to the intended audience, considers the need for complementary visual material, and prepares this if appropriate
• proof-reads the writing and presents it in the chosen way
• seeks feedback on the final product
• shares the text with the audience.

These four stages are closely interrelated and often overlap, as the writer’s progression from one step to the next is influenced by what they have done and what they anticipate.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9–13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 129–130.

What teachers can do to support students as they learn to write and communicate through texts

Teachers who know their students will know their writing strengths, know the gaps in their writing expertise, and plan to meet these needs. The students may need help in constructing complete sentences, structuring information within a paragraph, recognising elements of a coherent text, and using the conventions of written language. As students move on to more extended writing, teachers will need to give more detailed instruction about the specific forms and writing styles required for different writing tasks and about the writing process. The role of the teacher and the support provided to students at each stage will vary depending on what the next learning steps are for each student.

Students’ writing can be supported by small-group discussion at each stage of the writing. Sharing ideas and talking about them helps students to prepare for writing, generate and clarify ideas, practise the relevant vocabulary, and think through and organise their ideas. Sharing and discussing their completed work in pairs or in small groups and evaluating the finished product together can also be very helpful for students.

Developing independent learners

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Forming intentions

•  What is the purpose of the writing task?
•  What do I know about the topic or ideas?
•  Who is the audience, and what do I want them to know about the topic and the ideas?
•  What do I need to find out?
•  How can I put my information into the appropriate form?

Composing a text

•  What are the main ideas I want to include?
•  What supporting examples, evidence, details, or data will I need to include?
•  How should I structure my ideas?
•  How can I make my writing clear and effective?
•  What language or subject-specific vocabulary will I need to include?

Revising

•  After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
•  Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
•  Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
•  Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
•  Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
•  Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?

Publishing

•  What is the most effective way to publish or present my material?
•  How will I check that it is complete, accurate, and ready for sharing?

Throughout the writing process, the students should be thinking about what they can do by themselves and what they need support with. They may want to use their learning log to help with this thinking.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9–13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 134–135.

Using the sources of information in text

Sources of information in the written text include:

• Meaning: (semantics) – the meanings of the written words and of any diagrams or pictures in the text
• Structure (syntax) – the structure or syntax and grammar of the language that is used (at word, phrase, and whole-text level)
• visual and grapho-phonic sources of information – the visual features of the printed letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, including print conventions such as punctuation, spaces between words, and the use of capital or lower-case letters and italics or bold print.

Students can use these sources of information only if they can make links between:

• their existing understandings and the concepts in the text
• their existing knowledge of the structure of language and the structures used in the text
• their existing understanding of phonics (how sounds relate to print) or of print conventions and the words or conventions used in the text.
  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9–13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 54.

What does it look like?

Example 1 - Discrimination because of Non Conformity

The student creates a theme study report by integrating sources of information (written/visual: film; novel, play) and processing strategies (selecting, linking, commenting) on the theme of discrimination.

Extract:

Blade Runner and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are also similar because they both illustrate how societies are not very empathic to individuals that do not fit in. In Blade Runner the androids are not accepted into human society and are denied the right to live for more than four years even though they are essentially no different to the humans. This is shown when Deckard is given permission to kill the androids and does so without hesitation. Similarly, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the patients are locked away in a mental hospital so that society doesn't have to deal with them. Those who voluntarily isolate themselves in the hospital choose to stay there because they are unable to conform or fit into society. We can see this through the character Bromden when he describes society's pressures as the "combine" and he is unable to live his native American style of life because of these modem pressures. With these two novels we can see the lack of empathy for those individuals who do not readily conform to society's ideas or want to live their lives differently.

Example 2

Internal Assessment Resource – In Their Words (Word 149KB)

The student creates a research report by integrating sources of information (written/visual: film; novel, poem) and processing strategies (selecting, presenting, concluding, evaluating) on the topic of influence of society on family relationships and presents perceptive, integrated judgements.

Example 3

Internal Assessment Resource – In Search Of (Word 311KB)

The student develops an oral presentation by integrating sources of information (various aspects linked to an important character taken from a text studied) and processing strategies (integrating a range of presentation techniques including seminar; dramatic monologue; poetry reading; computer projected display) in order to present key ideas about their selected character.

Exemplar A [Excellence]:

We all rise or fall collectively according to the health of our society. Since an important aspect of society is the family, it is the family relationships that need to be nurtured and made strong for society to strengthen. My texts mostly reveal the negative influences of society on family relationships. I believe women lose out the most when a society is suffering. Betty is beaten and controlled; Miss Rehana opts out through failure; Mary goes insane and is finally murdered; Pai is rejected and the girl in ‘Maybelline Eyes’ is never loved for whom she really is. By showing the influence of a wide range of societies, it is clear that regardless of the society, family relationships are influenced by the values, beliefs and customs of that society for better or for worse.

Seeks feedback and makes changes to texts to improve clarity, meaning, and effect.

What do I need to know?

What teachers can do to support students as they learn to write and communicate through texts

Teachers who know their students will know their writing strengths, know the gaps in their writing expertise, and plan to meet these needs. The students may need help in constructing complete sentences, structuring information within a paragraph, recognising elements of a coherent text, and using the conventions of written language. As students move on to more extended writing, teachers will need to give more detailed instruction about the specific forms and writing styles required for different writing tasks and about the writing process. The role of the teacher and the support provided to students at each stage will vary depending on what the next learning steps are for each student.

Students’ writing can be supported by small-group discussion at each stage of the writing. Sharing ideas and talking about them helps students to prepare for writing, generate and clarify ideas, practise the relevant vocabulary, and think through and organise their ideas. Sharing and discussing their completed work in pairs or in small groups and evaluating the finished product together can also be very helpful for students.

Developing independent learners

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Revising

• After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
• Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
• Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
• Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
• Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
• Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?

Publishing

• What is the most effective way to publish or present my material?
• How will I check that it is complete, accurate, and ready for sharing?

See Assessment for learning in practice

• Planning for Formative Assessment (PPT) (PowerPoint 1MB)
  Offers suggestions for sharing information about learning outcomes/intentions and achievement/success criteria with students.
• An Introduction to Formative Assessment (PPT) (PowerPoint 113KB)
  Introduces formative assessment. It includes references to research into Mâori student achievement.
• An Introduction to Formative Assessment for Secondary School Teachers (PPT) (PowerPoint 99KB)
  Assessment For Secondary School Teachers
  Use this presentation as a focus for professional development in formative assessment.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Internal Assessment Resource – In Their Words (Word 149KB)

As part of the process of developing and rehearsing an oral presentation, the student is encouraged to seek feedback and make changes to improve clarity, meaning and effect.

Extract from Task 4:

Rehearse your presentation with a partner or in a small group so that other students can give you feedback. As well as giving you valuable feedback, this process will help other students consider how techniques can be effectively incorporated into their own presentations.

Example 2

Internal Assessment Resource – On the Road (Word 93KB)

As part of the process of developing a final version of a travel article, the student is encouraged to seek feedback and make changes to improve clarity, meaning and effect.

Extract from Task 5:

Use the information and ideas from earlier tasks to write your own travel article, crafting it so that it is an extended piece of writing (at least 600 words). You may not include material from the exemplars or from the activity. You will need to consider the following points as you develop and craft the writing:

• a strong narrative point of view
• a sense of a clear beginning and movement towards an end
• effective words and phrases that indicate time, sequence and order
• speech to move the action along or to emphasise differences or similarities
• mood through appropriate word choice
• metaphor, allusion, alliteration and other language devices to enhance visual description
• a range of senses explored
• specific details to enhance the reader’s ability to visualise with the situation and the characters
• a variety of sentence structures, short sentences for impact, longer sentences to develop ideas and images
• an apt title.

Is reflective about the production of own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating learning with confidence.

What do I need to know?

Learning to Learn (Word 128KB)

Informed Strategy Training makes use of the learning to learn approach to education and it makes students aware of what they need to do, and why, in order to become proficient readers. It provides students with scaffolding and insight into the higher order thinking skills that they need to develop in order to make sense of a piece of text. Informed strategy training requires individual students to look at the following two questions:

What do proficient readers do?

What do you need to focus on to improve your reading?

Teachers often underestimate the extent to which modelling of effective reading behaviour and the coaching of thinking skills are necessary to extend their students' ability to comprehend and process information.

Students have to learn how to learn. The evidence from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2000 study (see Ministry of Education, 2001b) shows that students need to develop a range of information-processing abilities (both cognitive and metacognitive) and that it is just as important for them to deliberately prepare for learning.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. p.23.

Learning Logs

A learning log or journal is a student’s own ongoing record of their learning. Students can use them in a number of ways, for example, by recording any difficulties they have and how they deal with them. But they can use learning logs for more than this. They can use them to understand and reflect on their learning processes and on the learning-to-learn strategies that they use. They can use them to:

• identify what and how they’re learning
• identify the types of thinking they’re using to learn
• process the information they’ve gathered
• develop learning strategies that are effective for them
• monitor and evaluate their own learning
• become increasingly independent as learners.

Teachers need to explain the purposes and uses of learning logs to their students, making it clear that the logs will not be assessed because they are a private dialogue between each student and the teacher. At times, teachers may suggest that each student shares their log with a partner if they are happy to do so.

In planning for students to use the learning-log process, teachers can:

• build the writing of the log into a regular routine over several weeks
• give students a set, limited time in which to write in their logs – probably at the end of the lesson
• focus on a specific task, activity, key concept, or learning strategy in each lesson
• use a variety of approaches, such as free writing, questions, or sentence starters
• model reflections by writing on the board as students write in their books
• check logs regularly and write short feedback comments to each student.

Logs may be kept in separate books, but they can also be part of students’ everyday work. For example, students could rule a broad margin on the side of their page and use that space to reflect, ask questions, jot notes, and so on.

Students may simply write what they wish, or they may be given open-ended questions or sentence starters. Sometimes teachers may want the learning-log entries to focus on specific areas.

Students and teachers need a shared language to talk about the types of thinking associated with classroom tasks and about literacy strategies and thinking strategies. Many students who already know some terms to describe the writing process – “revising”, “editing”, and so on – and who are familiar with some pre-writing strategies, such as brainstorming or mind mapping, may not know how to describe their own thinking and learning. Even students who describe instances of creative thinking and memory thinking in conversation may not realise how these processes form part of their learning.

It is very helpful for students to keep learning logs. By using learning logs, students can develop the language, knowledge, and awareness to think strategically and reflectively about their learning and the literacy strategies they use. Monitoring students’ learning logs also helps teachers to relate their teaching practice to their students’ learning.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. Appendix p.52-54.

What does it look like?

Example 1

English Online: The Crucible

Extract from Tasks 3 and 4:

Task 3: Performance

Present your performance as a group - preferably to another class using your teacher to provide a narrative link between scenes. To help with the evaluation (see Task 4) video-tape the performances. Your individual performance should use both speech and delivery techniques you annotated in 1b to convey the ideas/atmosphere your group identified as important

To help your teacher assess your performance head up a sheet with:

• Your name
• The role you played

Copy the following chart and complete it after first viewing the video tape of your performance.

Example 2

Extract from Theme Report:

After studying the theme of discrimination this year I have found that society is not very tolerant or accepting of those individuals who do not conform. I have realised just how much pressure society places on individuals to 'fit in' or else face being excluded from society altogether, as we see with the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I think that it is a lack of empathy and knowledge about the individual's situation that can keep society's view on what is acceptable so prejudiced and narrow minded. However, I now know that the fear of being exposed to something new and different is enough to keep society without the knowledge that it needs to be able to recognise and understand that not everyone should have to conform or is able to conform. This is a vicious circle and it appears that although society is becoming more tolerant, there will always be those individuals who are discriminated against for one reason or another.

Example 3

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

Kate de Goldi’s tips for editing and rewriting guide students to be reflective about their own writing, monitoring and self evaluating their work:

Take one of your pieces of writing and prepare to assess it ruthlessly.

1. Ask yourself what you like the most about this piece. Is it some of the language? The shape of a sentence? A character? The dialogue? The point of view? Description? Note all the things you particularly like.
2. Ask yourself what you think the heart of the piece is? What you’re really trying to say, or convey? Write that down.
3. Now rewrite the piece from memory – that is, without looking at your first copy, but bearing in mind the things you particularly like.
4. How does it read? What’s changed? What have you left out? Retained? What are the improvements? Is it closer to expressing what you’ve intended it to?

Extract from Editing and Rewriting, [p89. 90]

Constructs a range of texts that demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of purpose and audience through deliberate choice of content, language, and text form

What do I need to know?

Features of text 

Teaching about text forms can help students understand how text is structured and why. We need to be careful, however, to be flexible about the features in a text form. Authentic text forms are often mixed and text forms evolve and change.

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

"As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities."
Ministry of Education, 2003a. p.136.

"Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas."
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, Ministry of Education, 2006. p.130-131.

Knowing the students: gathering information on students’ writing

Teachers can gather information on students’ writing by observing them as they write and by evaluating their writing and discussing it with them. Teachers could ask the following questions about students’ writing.

• Is there a clear purpose and audience for the writing, and does the writing meet that purpose for that audience?
• Is the information conveyed of the quality required?
• Are the ideas clearly expressed? Is the language appropriate to the text form? Are there coherent sentences with a variety of structures?
• Are the structures appropriate for the text form? Is the writing logically organised? Are the main and supporting ideas well linked? Are all the sentences linked in meaningful ways?
• Has the writer attended to surface features, such as spelling, punctuation, and grammar?
• Does the vocabulary include appropriate subject-specific words?

It is also important to know about the literacy and thinking strategies that students use during the writing process. Teachers could look for the following evidence at the different stages of writing:

Forming intentions

• Do the students use strategies to plan what they will write?
• Do the students use strategies for organising and analysing the information they find (for example, do they use brainstorms, spider diagrams, listings, the KWLH strategy, structured overviews, and timelines, as appropriate to the text form)?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?

Composing a text

• Do the students use and experiment with language to clarify their ideas?
• Do the students use appropriate writing frames for structuring and sequencing content?
• Do the students use quickwriting to monitor their understanding as they draft their text?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?

Revising

• Do the students focus on purpose and audience?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?
  Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, Ministry of Education, 2006.p.132-133.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Screen Time (Word 148KB)

In their review of The Green Mile, a student demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of purpose and audience [to challenge the viewer to engage with a central theme] through the deliberate choice of language, content and text form [selection of particular filmic and narrative techniques].

Extract from Exemplar B: The Final Verdict 

Sympathising with a Death Row inmate is not difficult. The Green Mile’s depiction of what an electrocution actually looks and sounds like is a graphic experience, particularly as we are shown not one but four electrocutions close up. Darabont's craftsmanship is apparent in each of these scenes in his use of precise haunting detail as if Cold Mountain Penitentiary was alive today. These scenes bring us to the film's moral dilemma: how humane are we? Should someone die for a crime they have committed? Even though capital punishment has been abolished here in "God's own," as we have opted for less barbaric measures of punishment with life imprisonment for severe crimes, over 90 countries around the world, including America and many Middle Eastern countries, still carry out different forms of capital punishment. A touch of the supernatural gives balance to the frightening electrocution scenes and sets The Green Mile apart. It seems unthinkable that this inmate with mysterious powers, "one of God's true miracles," should be imprisoned in this place of darkness and of death. Death Row is the last place you would expect to find magical powers, miracles happening and the forces of good and evil at battle with each other. With light bulbs smashing everywhere, a circus mouse that basically can't die and thunder and lightning in the background, this supernatural aspect just adds another dimension to the film giving it that touch of fantasy and the unknown.

Overall, The Green Mile has the key ingredients for a great film with strong underlying themes, a talented director and convincing performances from its actors, and don't forget that supernatural flavour. By the end of the film, you are left thinking about the poor inmates who walked “the green mile." You are also left somewhat relieved that you are living here "down under" - without capital punishment.

Example 2

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

In their short story, a student demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of purpose and audience [to present the narrator’s perspective of an incident to a readership of young adults] through the deliberate choice of language, content and text form [selection of evocative details; emphasis on narrator’s impressions in short story form].

Extract from Exemplar E:   Love Hurts

It's happened again. Again I'd seen that tearful look that precedes the words, "it's over." As always it vividly reminds me of my first love, my true love. The clouds were thick and the rain was relentless. Luckily I had seen the weather forecast the night before and was prepared. The blustery wind that accompanied the rain blew me through the doors of the cafe. The darkness of the cafe absorbed me and I stared blindly. The air was heavy with the aroma of fresh coffee. Slowly the dark blur lifted and my eyes set upon a silhouette hunched in the corner. The near crash while driving here and the throbbing pain from my sore ankle which I had twisted earlier in the day faded from my mind. What had happened? As I walked nearer the silhouette took form and I noticed that her normal bright eyes were replaced with deep pools that looked as though they'd overflow any minute. Her hair, normally neatly brushed, was dirty and dishevelled. She was wearing some sort of tracksuit. I took the seat opposite her.

Conveys and sustains personal voice, where appropriate.

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.

Ministry of Education, 2003a p 136

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners.

Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, Ministry of Education, 2006, p. 130-131

The distinctive voice in literature: “Some of the most important things a writer must remember are the words that are used and the way the characters speak, as these will create the moods and impressions necessary to impact on the reader…”  

Who Tells the Story: “When we studied the short story as a genre we talked about point of view and the necessity of creating a credible narrator. The writer has several options…”

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

In her short story, a student conveys and sustains a personal voice as a central character about to begin a bus trip that will take her on an enforced trip to boarding school.  

Extract from Exemplar B: I Hope They Feel Really Stink

I frowned down through the safety glass to assembled parents. Mine specifically. They looked happy as if a great burden had been lifted from their shoulders and the new freedom was making them giddy. I did not like the look of this. It made me feel very uneasy. I travelled this road many times before to visit the grandparents in Dunedin. Was it merely a coincidence that the freezing works was on the way, or did the Parents’ plan entail more bloodthirsty work than the simple plot of leaving me to rot and disintegrate in a boarding school away from all those “bad influences?’

My version of a horror movie in which meat factories substituted their produce with human sausages screened in my mind. I certainly was not feeling good about this boarding school idea, “you’re going if you want to or not young lady" business. Attempting for the moment to visualise pleasant thoughts, I leaned my head against the window liking the way the idling vibration passed through to teeth and glasses. Nestled comfortably into the upholstery of the bus, I familiarised myself with this plastic fabric environment for future reference to "my parents are worse than yours" discussions….

Example 2

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi

Print and DVD resource published by the Ministry of Education 2007 [provided free to all secondary schools] The resource guides students to convey and sustain a personal voice through varying and experimenting with narrative point of view. 

Extract from Creative Writing: Point of View [p84, 85]:

Write a 200 word passage describing a person leaving the room after hearing bad news. Concentrate on what they do - the way they walk, the things they touch, the sounds they make, the way they close – or don’t close the door – in order to show how they feel. Write the passage in the 3rd person.

Now re-write the passage in the first person. What changes? What do you need to do differently to convey the same emotion? Or does writing in the first person change the nature of the emotion? Are different feelings revealed or emphasised? Who is the narrator? The person in question – or someone watching them?

Now write the passage in the 2nd person. What changes this time? What new information or emphases are there? Again, who is the narrator? The recipient of the bad news or someone watching them?

Develops, communicates, and sustains sophisticated ideas, information, and understandings.

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.
Ministry of Education, 2003a p 136

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas. 

Stage 1: Forming intentions The writer:

• determines the purpose and audience
• chooses a topic and ideas
• finds and selects information.

Stage 2: Composing a text The writer:

• selects the most appropriate content or ideas
• writes these ideas down, structuring and sequencing content appropriately
• chooses the most appropriate language for the purpose and the audience.
  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 129

What teachers can do to support students as they develop ideas

Teachers can gather information on students’ writing by observing them as they write and by evaluating their writing and discussing it with them. Teachers could also ask the following questions about students’ writing.

• Is there a clear purpose and audience for the writing, and does the writing meet that purpose for that audience?
• Is the information conveyed of the quality required?
• Are the ideas clearly expressed? Is the language appropriate to the text form? Are there coherent sentences with a variety of structures?
• Are the structures appropriate for the text form? Is the writing logically organised? Are the main and supporting ideas well linked? Are all the sentences linked in meaningful‑ways?
• Has the writer attended to surface features, such as spelling, punctuation, and grammar?
• Does the vocabulary include appropriate subject-specific words?

It is also important to know about the literacy and thinking strategies that students use during the writing process. Teachers could look for the following evidence at the different stages of writing.

Forming intentions

• Do the students use strategies to plan what they will write?
• Do the students use strategies for organising and analysing the information they find (for example, do they use brainstorms, spider diagrams, listings, the KWLH strategy, structured overviews, and timelines, as appropriate to the text form)?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?

 Composing a text

• Do the students use and experiment with language to clarify their ideas?
• Do the students use appropriate writing frames for structuring and sequencing content?
• Do the students use quickwriting to monitor their understanding as they draft their text?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?
  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 133

Developing independent writers

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing. 

Forming intentions

• What is the purpose of the writing task?
• What do I know about the topic or ideas?
• Who is the audience, and what do I want them to know about the topic and the ideas?
• What do I need to find out?
• How can I put my information into the appropriate form?

Composing a text

• What are the main ideas I want to include?
• What supporting examples, evidence, details, or data will I need to include?
• How should I structure my ideas?
• How can I make my writing clear and effective?
• What language or subject-specific vocabulary will I need to include?
  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 135

What does it look like?

Example 1

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

The writing activity encourages students to develop ideas [by going out into the world looking for story]; then to communicate and sustain comprehensive ideas and understandings [by linking those ideas together and making connections].

Extracts from Wrenching Story From the World [p77 /78]: From Kate De Goldi:

Margaret Mahy points out that story must be sought; inspiration may work for a very few writers but most writers must go out into the world looking for story. They do this by:

a) honing their capacity to notice, by being alert to the way the ordinariness and weirdness of the world comes at them through their senses:

• what people say, the fabulous peculiarities of language, the sounds of the city and country, the music of the everyday;
• how people dress and walk, how the sea seems to swallow the sun, the proportions of nature and man-made object
• how basic smell is to us, how it so vividly calls up memory and emotion
• the exact texture of spring grass under bare feet
• the particular snotty viscosity of a raw oyster, etc, etc

 b) making connections between the things they observe, by asking questions of their observations, by saying what if, by imagining other possibilities… So, to borrow an anecdote of Margaret Mahy’s: a typo in something she’d written produced ‘a shop-wrecked sailor’ rather than one who’d been ‘ship-wrecked.’ What would a shop-wrecked sailor be feeling, Mahy immediately asked herself? How did he or she come to be so wrecked? How does he or she recover? Immediately she had a story possibility.

Example 2

NZATE NCEA English Externals Exemplars Level 3:  Exemplar 4 AS 90723

In her essay, a student develops, communicates and sustains comprehensive ideas and understandings about the treatment of a key theme in Memento. Extract from

Exemplar 4:

Memento further explores the ideas, delving into the manipulation and distortion of memory. Leonard is not only manipulated by Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliamo) but interestingly enough by himself. The opening scene of Memento shows us just how distorted this film is going to be. The entire visual is shown in reverse, with blood running up the walls, bullets going back into the gun and glasses flying back onto Teddy's head. We can tell purely from the use of this sophisticated editing technique that memory and the mind in Memento will be distorted and manipulated. We further see this distortion through the juxtaposition of shots. We view an image of Lenny for two frames placed within a shot showing Sammy Jankis sitting in a psychiatric hospital. This makes us wonder about how real the Sammy Jankis story is and whether Leonard conditions himself to believe that his story is the story of another man. We must wonder whether Leonard has manipulated his own memory "to be happy". Editing brings forth this idea of the manipulation of memory to a great extent.

Creates coherent, planned whole texts by adding details to ideas, or making links to other ideas and details

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities. 
Ministry of Education, 2003a p.136.

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas. 

Stage 3: Revising

The writer:

• reviews the draft to ensure it meets the purpose and is appropriate for the audience
• modifies the writing as necessary
• attends to surface features such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p.129.

What teachers can do to support students as they develop ideas

Teachers can gather information on students’ writing by observing them as they write and by evaluating their writing and discussing it with them. Teachers could also ask the following questions about students’ writing.

• Is there a clear purpose and audience for the writing, and does the writing meet that purpose for that audience?
• Is the information conveyed of the quality required?
• Are the ideas clearly expressed? Is the language appropriate to the text form? Are there coherent sentences with a variety of structures?
• Are the structures appropriate for the text form? Is the writing logically organised? Are the main and supporting ideas well linked? Are all the sentences linked in meaningful ways?
• Has the writer attended to surface features, such as spelling, punctuation, and grammar?
• Does the vocabulary include appropriate subject-specific words?

It is also important to know about the literacy and thinking strategies that students use during the writing process. Teachers could look for the following evidence at the different stages of writing.

Revising

• Do the students focus on purpose and audience?
• Do the students use feedback and feed-forward from peers and teacher at this stage?

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p.133. 

Developing independent writers

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Revising

• After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
• Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
• Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
• Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
• Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
• Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?
  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. p.135.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

The template used for deconstructing structural features encourages students to create their own coherent, planned whole texts by integrating the narrator’s perspective into a carefully planned structure.

Example 2

NCEA English Externals Exemplars Level 3:  Exemplar 6 AS 90721

In her essay on how the clash of opposites can be used to present ideas in The Great Gatsby, a student creates a coherent, planned whole text by adding details to ideas or making links to other ideas and details.

Extract from Exemplar 6:

The clash of characters, be it rich or poor, kind of heart or cruel, also shows Fitzgerald’s ideas on the kind of people a society focused on superficiality can create. The wealthy socialites of New York are often compared with poor people like Wilson. The wealthy come across as vain and vacuous and are only interested in the pursuit of money and possessions. Daisy and Jordan are often described having conversations "as cool as their white dresses and their empty eyes in the absence of all desire" where as Wilson is portrayed as "pitiful small figure struggling to make something of his life."

When Nick sees him for the first time he describes his grey face as blending into his surroundings, certainly not glamorous like the wealthy in New York. This clearly helps to show us the failure of the American Dream as those who have supposedly "achieved" it are still just as unhappy as those struggling to. Within the wealthy there are also contrasts of character. Gatsby is essentially a figure good and pure of heart, and possesses "a certain romantic readiness and undying gift for hope" whereas Tom is arrogant, cruel and selfish. He even describes Wilson as "being so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive". This particular clash of opposites shows us the effect that the pursuit of wealth and power can have on people.

Example 3

Te Kete Ipurangi - In Search Of (Word 323KB)

In his research report on representations of masculinity in literature, a student creates a coherent, planned whole text by adding details to ideas or making links to other ideas and details.

Extract from Exemplar A:

How masculinity shapes the character

As shown in Once Were Warriors to be a ‘real’ man and to be considered masculine is to inflict violence. Warriors contains numerous scenes of Jake Heke, the central character, using his fists to prove his masculinity. The arrogant and explosive character single-handedly beats a man unconscious in front of an awe struck pub crowd. The attribute of physical potency is a concept that is strongly associated with masculinity. Tough and `masculine' behaviour as shown in the film appears to warrant respect and admiration from others.

This belief is also obvious in Foreskin's Lament. Instead of continuous confrontations however, this physical toughness is exposed through rugby, the sport that is "more than just a game." Seymour, affectionately known to his friends as Foreskin witnesses the lengths Ken will go to is order to appear `fine' when his life was in grave danger before a rugby match. The `she'll be right' attitude is often employed to avoid the so-called `unmanly' act of exposing true beliefs or feelings. The team mentality is seemingly an epitome of masculinity in Foreskin's Lament, and also in Warriors in a more perverse form of ‘team’ through the gang associations when Jake's son Nig turns to Toa Aotearoa after becoming disillusioned with family life.

This could be put down to a desire to express extreme macho behaviour, a substitute for family life and a ‘team’ in which maleness is valued. It is worth noting another softer side to masculinity in What Becomes of the Broken Hearted though. The reformed Jake helps his son Sonny in times of need. Jake feels proud of what he is doing and feels that he is conducting himself in a masculine way, which is far removed from Jake, the vicious pub brawler in Warriors.

Example 4

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

When framing questions for their research, students are encouraged to create their own coherent, planned whole texts by making links to other ideas and details.

Extracts from Your Own Investigation, p.35:

This section aims to make connections between writers’ lives and their work, and to emphasise more generally that the imaginative writer is always a product of a particular place and time and community.

Possible research questions

1. What connections can you trace between the writers’ family lives and their writing lives?
2. What connections can you find in the writers’ educational and reading influences?
3. How significant have the writers’ various working lives been in regard to their writing?
4. What can you learn about the impact of the Depression and War on each of the writers?
5. What are their other interests and how do they impact on their writing?
6. What connections can you make between the writers in terms of how they describe their relationship to story and language?

Ideas show perception, depth of thought, and awareness of a range of dimensions or viewpoints.

What do I need to know?

Developing students’ understanding of texts

Students need to develop strategies that they can use deliberately and purposefully to enhance their understanding of text and develop their critical awareness.
Ministry of Education, 2003a, p. 131.

Readers need to understand texts at surface level and also at deeper levels of understanding. The depth of a reader’s understanding of any text depends on their prior knowledge and their ability to engage actively with the ideas presented in the text.The different levels should be seen as part of a continuum. This continuum of understanding begins where the reader understands the meaning of the text at a literal level. It extends to where the reader can interpret the author’s implied meanings and then continues to the deeper levels of critical reading, where the reader evaluates the content, responds to the author’s ideas, and integrates those ideas with their own existing knowledge.

Students need to use strategies to effectively employ the processes needed to engage with text at these different levels. Reading and writing are reciprocal processes: comprehending and composing text are complementary. Writing draws on the same sources of knowledge as reading. Talking and listening are the two sides of spoken communication, and reading and writing are just as closely linked. Readers and writers use their knowledge and experience: readers to construct meaning from text and writers to construct meaning in text.

To communicate in written language successfully, learners need to read like writers and to write like readers. ... In setting their instructional objectives, teachers need to plan to make students aware of these links.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2006. p. 73.

Uses a wide range of oral, written, and visual language features coherently, fluently, and with control to create meaning and command attention

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.
Ministry of Education, 2003a, page 136

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 129

Developing independent writers

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Forming intentions

• What is the purpose of the writing task?
• What do I know about the topic or ideas?
• Who is the audience, and what do I want them to know about the topic and the ideas?
• What do I need to find out?
• How can I put my information into the appropriate form?
• Composing a text
• What are the main ideas I want to include?
• What supporting examples, evidence, details, or data will I need to include?
• How should I structure my ideas?
• How can I make my writing clear and effective?
• What language or subject-specific vocabulary will I need to include?

Revising

• After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
• Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
• Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
• Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
• Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
• Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?

Publishing

• What is the most effective way to publish or present my material?
• How will I check that it is complete, accurate, and ready for sharing?

Throughout the writing process, the students should be thinking about what they can do by themselves and what they need support with. They may want to use their learning log to help with this thinking.
Effective Literacy Strategies for Years 9-13, Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 135

• The language of literary analysis
• The language of film and video
• English Online: Exploring Language

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Screen Time (Word 148KB)

In his review of Schindler’s List, a student uses visual language features [including the use of colour], coherently, fluently, and with control to create meaning and command attention.

Extract from Exemplar A:

Technical brilliance heightens the film’s impact. Although this brilliance can be subtle, such as in the use of selected colour through candle flames and ‘red Genia’ in an otherwise black and white film, it is what makes the film such a masterpiece. Spielberg has described the Holocaust as "life without light." For him, colour is the symbol of life in Schindler’s List. Spielberg cleverly symbolises the end of hope and the beginning of the nightmare through a brilliantly crafted image of the extinguished candle [first shown burning in colour], together with the end of the Jewish prayer chant, to be replaced by black and white.

Later Genia’s red coat becomes a critical moment for Schindler as he watches the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto. By using colour to focus on the plight of a single defenceless girl, Spielberg highlights the impact of the Holocaust on a self centred individual who has previously been an observer and exploiter. The tragic nature of the film’s subject matter is not overpowered by grandiose camera shots and scene selection. Schindler’s List has been described as the most controlled and subdued of Spielberg’s films for good reason. Spielberg’s film is, in his words: "not so much a motion picture but a document of those intolerable times." The dominating monochrome helps create more of a documentary look than of a drama, as in the style of a 1940s news reel.

Example 2

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

The activity encourages students to use written language features [including the careful selection of detail and syntax], coherently, fluently, and with control to create meaning and command attention.

Extract from Task 2:

Developing structures through details and syntax

 a) In task 1 you have already looked at the overall structure used in Meeting Kurt. Consider how structure works on a different level and has a key role in developing a narrative point of view. In Meeting Kurt details are selected and sentence structures are crafted to build a pervading tone which ranges from surprise and self consciousness in the opening to shock and disbelief later on.

 Look at this extract from the middle of the story when Julie first notices the toy. These sections have been set out on separate lines to highlight key features.

Consider Julie’s shocked reaction a little later as the reality

sinks in that Kurt has a son so soon after they lost touch:

Example 3

Te Kete Ipurangi - In Their Words (Word 150KB)

Exemplar A [Excellence]

In her oral presentation, a student uses oral and visual language features [including dramatic techniques], coherently, fluently, and with control to create meaning and command attention.

Example 4

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

Kate de Goldi’s approaches encourage students to use written language features [including the use of metaphor] coherently, fluently, and with control to create meaning and command attention.

Extract from Metaphor, p82

Jack Lasenby, Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley all understand the power of metaphor in storytelling. They know that metaphor (and simile) are the armoury with which the writer re-presents the world, makes it fresh and startling for the reader, so that the reader sees the ordinary and well known anew and more emphatically. Or, through metaphor, the reader finally understands fully a notion or event that has never quite come into focus before.

There are many definitions of metaphor but here are two goodies: metaphor is ‘an exactly felt error’ (John Ciardi); metaphor is ‘a medium of fuller, riper knowing’. (Philip Wheelwright).

American writer, Jane Yolen, makes the point that ‘To make a good metaphor (one) has to be a good observer first,’ or, as she quotes Aristotle: ‘to make metaphors implies an eye for resemblances’. Possible equation: Observation + Re-presentation (metaphor) = Persuasive Imaginative Writing.

Example 5

Using Shared and Guided Approaches to Writing

Shared writing is a joint writing approach in which both teacher and students contribute to the plan, the ideas, and the language of the text they construct together. In guided writing, teachers discuss and model writing strategies with students in small groups and the students go on to construct texts individually.

The purpose of the strategy

As they work with the teacher to construct a text through shared writing, the students learn how to brainstorm ideas, plan an outline, and draft a piece of writing for a particular purpose in a specific form. By writing the text collaboratively, the students learn from the teacher and from each other, become confident in expressing their ideas, and extend their thinking. The teacher is able to focus the students on the parts of the writing process that they need to learn next.

What the teacher does

• Before beginning the shared writing task, clarify with the students why the writing is being done collaboratively.
• Work through one or more of the four stages of the writing process, using the relevant questions for each stage (see page 135).
• Model how a writer analyses, evaluates, and clarifies their ideas, chooses appropriate language, and composes and revises a text. Acknowledge the interrelatedness of each stage in the writing process. The points in the box below may be useful.

Forming intentions

• Clarify the purpose and the audience with the students.
• Discuss the topic with students, activate their prior knowledge, and brainstorm ideas (for example, by drawing a mind map or listing words that are related to the topic). Ask probing questions to determine whether the ideas gathered reflect a thorough understanding of the topic and the purpose.
• Decide on an appropriate extended text structure.

Composing a text

• Work with the students to organise the ideas and plan an outline, reminding them of the outlines they have worked with previously (for example, in the activity on pages 141–142).
• With the students, critically analyse how the main ideas are expressed (for example, whether they are well supported by evidence or illustration).
• Write with the students, constructing the text together.

Revising

• Discuss whether appropriate language has been used, whether ideas have been linked, and whether the text is likely to engage its intended audience.
• Review the purpose for writing.
• Modify the writing, attending to surface features such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation if necessary.

Publishing

• Reflect on ways the text could be presented and choose the way that best meets the purpose for writing.
• Proof-read and complete the text.
• Make the completed text available to the intended audience and seek feedback.

What the students do

• The students engage actively in contributing to the writing process, suggesting ideas for content and structure.
• They reflect to consider how far the shared writing has met its intended purpose.

What the teacher looks for

• Are the students reflecting on their understanding of text content, text structure, and the writing process?
• Are they extending their understanding by learning from others and trying new ideas?

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004, p. 136-137

Uses an increasing vocabulary to communicate precise meaning.

What do I need to know?

Vocabulary: Research and Challenges: What the research tells us

Knowing about learners' vocabulary needs

Students usually need direct teaching to acquire the specialised vocabulary that is vital for academic success. Many students whose oral vocabulary is quite adequate for everyday communication have not yet acquired a rich store of words to use for reading and writing. In particular, they may lack knowledge of the academic vocabulary that's important for success at secondary school.

All students need planned opportunities to learn, use, and practise, in authentic contexts, the vocabulary that they need in order to communicate about the subjects they are studying. There is more than one level of knowing a word or term. We can understand many words when hearing them spoken or reading them in a text, even though we do not use these words in speaking or writing ourselves. This is known as our "receptive vocabulary". Our "productive vocabulary" consists of those words that we can actually use accurately, either in speech or in writing. Students need to be able to use the specialised words that they learn.

Students learning English as a new language have an urgent need to acquire more vocabulary. Not surprisingly, new learners of English have considerably less knowledge of English vocabulary items than first-language English speakers of the same age (Nation, 1990, 2001). Cummins (1989) estimates that it takes two years for new learners of English to be able to communicate effectively at a conversational level. It can take five to seven years for these students to learn to use academic language proficiently. All students need many exposures to the vocabulary that is new to them. Effective teachers help their students to link new words to their existing knowledge and give them opportunities to reinforce their learning during meaningful communication.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13: A Guide for Teachers, NZ Ministry of Education 2006, p. 27-31. 

The challenges for teachers

Are the students aware of the context-specific meanings of the words they need to use?To understand subject content and achieve their learning goals, students need to know the relevant vocabulary, including specialised words and terms. The challenges for teachers are:

• to establish what vocabulary expertise the students bring with them (that is, to know their students);
• to establish ways of building on the students' expertise and teaching them the vocabulary they need (that is, to know what teachers can do);
• to help the students develop strategies to identify and solve unknown vocabulary (that is, to enable them to become independent vocabulary learners).

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13: A Guide for Teachers, NZ Ministry of Education 2006, pp. 27-31.

Knowing the students’ vocabulary knowledge

Students need to know the vocabulary of specific subjects. Teachers can collect useful information about their students' vocabulary knowledge in their subject area by devising a simple test using the key words of the subject. Monitoring the students' work as they use new words will also provide valuable evidence to use when planning future vocabulary teaching. Teachers can provide an environment that is rich in subject-specific words. This raises the students' consciousness of words and their awareness of the power and fascination of words. For example, a class could develop a display of "words of the week" or a "word wall", where the students write up new words that they have learned (see Ruddell and Shearer, 2002).

This activity need not be limited to newly learned or subject-specific words – it can include any interesting words. As well as giving the message that words are fun, such a display can provide the teacher with useful evidence of their students' developing vocabulary knowledge. One student (quoted in Ruddell and Shearer, page 352) said, "I used to only think about vocabulary in school. The whole world is vocabulary." All students benefit from thinking and talking about new vocabulary. For students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, it may be best for them to use their first language for this, or to find first language equivalents for new English vocabulary.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13: A Guide for Teachers, NZ Ministry of Education 2006, p. 27-31.

Knowing what teachers can do

Introducing students to new vocabulary

Teachers can identify the key terms needed for understanding and communicating about some specific subject content. This is the vocabulary that the students need to know in order to understand, discuss, and write about the subject content appropriately. When deciding which key terms to teach, consider:

• how often the terms are used;
• how important they are for relevant subject-specific learning;
• how important they are for general academic use.

For some words, a simple explanation from the teacher may be all that is needed. For many other words, the teacher will need to plan how to integrate the vocabulary learning into their teaching of the subject content. Simply giving a word's definition or presenting it in a glossary may not be effective. Students need to link new words with the words they already know and with related words and terms.

It is important to remember that there is a limit to the number of vocabulary items that students can take in at one time. Within one learning session, students should not be expected to learn more than six or seven words.

Helping students to solve unknown vocabulary

Encourage students to actively monitor their own understanding of text. When students get "stuck" in their reading, they should be aware that they can decide to try one or more appropriate strategies. Teachers can help them to adopt and use effective literacy strategies when they come across unfamiliar words and terms.

Giving students opportunities to use new words and terms

Students need many exposures to new words in meaningful contexts. Plan to provide many opportunities for students to integrate their new words into their spoken and written vocabularies. When students practise using new vocabulary soon after learning it, they are more likely to remember it and to use it appropriately and with increasing confidence.

Teachers can promote vocabulary learning by exposing their students to new words in a range of meaningful contexts and by setting purposeful tasks that require the students to use the words many times. Vocabulary learning should occur in oral language contexts as well as written language contexts. Speaking and listening provide the platform for learning new vocabulary, which can then be used in reading and writing. Discussion and other oral-language activities that are part of the classroom culture help to establish students' newly learned vocabulary as part of their "usable memory".

Developing independent learners

Students need to be aware of the strategies that they can use to help them decode and understand unfamiliar words and terms. They will be more successful in learning new words when they consciously take an active part in the learning process. By teaching them strategies that they can use to develop their knowledge of words, teachers empower students to become independent vocabulary learners.

Teachers should encourage all students to try to identify the meaning of unfamiliar words by themselves, first by using context clues and other strategies to work out the meaning and then by checking in their dictionaries. Teachers model strategies for learning unknown vocabulary, and students practise using these strategies.

Teachers could suggest that students use the following questions, at appropriate stages as they learn new vocabulary, to help them think about their understanding.

• What key words do I know already?
• What related words do I know?
• What new vocabulary can I now use confidently to explain my understanding of the subject content?
• What new understandings have I gained?
• What are some examples of context clues that may help me to understand new-vocabulary?

These questions could be included in students' learning logs or put on wallcharts for students to refer to when appropriate.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13: A Guide for Teachers, NZ Ministry of Education 2006, p. 27-31.

Knowing about different categories of vocabulary

The following vocabulary categories may be useful for teachers to consider.

• High-frequency words: High-frequency words are the words most often used in a language and make up over eighty percent of most written text. There are about two thousand high-frequency word families in the English language. These include all the basic words needed for communicating in English. A teacher who is aware that some students may not know the high-frequency words in the language they are using at school can plan to teach them these words first, along with a few other words that they need to know, such as the teacher's name.

• Specialised academic vocabulary: Students need to learn new, subject-specific terms for every subject that they study at secondary school. For example, in the resources and economic activities strand of social studies, they need to be able to use the terms "supply and demand", "productivity", and "access to goods and services".

Many students know only the everyday meanings of words that also have different, specialised meanings.

One reason for students finding certain academic words difficult to learn is that many words have a general, everyday meaning as well as a subject-specific meaning. For example, "volume", "range", and "function" all have both everyday and specialised meanings. Nicholson (1988) found that many students had very strongly established understandings of the everyday meanings of certain words and so they found it hard to grasp that these words also had specialised academic meanings. When discussing subject content with their students, teachers can explore this issue and model using the words correctly in different-contexts.

General academic vocabulary: General academic vocabulary includes terms used across the curriculum. Some of these terms, such as "define" and "assess", are often used when giving instructions to students, and others, such as "method" and "survey", are used to describe concepts, processes, and strategies common to many subject areas. General academic words are often used in tests and examinations, and students need to be confident about using such words to "show what they know".

Coxhead compiled her academic word list (a list of general academic terms) by analysing which words were most often found throughout twenty-eight subject areas in university texts in New Zealand and around the world (Coxhead, 1998).

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13: A Guide for Teachers, NZ Ministry of Education 2006, p. 27-31.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Things That Make You Go Hmmm (Word 125KB)

In his column piece, a student uses an increasing vocabulary [wide ranging, effective vocabulary selection] to communicate precise meaning in a satirical piece on the vagaries of fashion. Extracts from Exemplar C: I saw Che Guevara today. In the canteen. It's not unusual. I saw him in town too. Ernesto Guevara. Born in Argentina and aimlessly strolling through the mall. He used to be a freedom fighter you know. Led a revolution. Back before the CIA granted him martyrdom and before his face was printed on thousands of T‑shirts, bags and other fashionable stuff. The Che I saw was on a red T‑shirt. There are others around school too, on bags and T‑shirts mainly. Even I own a Che badge. I never wear it though. Modern Che sightings are understandable. Che is cool. His careless but perfectly placed hair with his careless but perfectly placed hat urges that fashionable feeling of fighting for peace.

Example 2 

NCEA English Externals Exemplars Level 3:  Exemplar 2 AS 90721

In his essay on The Crucible, a student uses an increasing vocabulary to communicate precise meaning about allegorical elements within the play.

Student introduction to essay on The Crucible (Miller): To what extent do you agree that plays are written to teach us about ordinary people and their moral dilemmas? Discuss your views with reference to a non-Shakespearean play (or plays) you have studied. According to Marion Starkey (author of The Devil in Massachusetts), the Salem witch trials of 1692 are “an allegory of our times”. And Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, with its strong and perceptive insight into the moral dilemmas of ordinary people, clearly illustrates the truth of this statement. 1692 in Salem was a trying time for all involved, with accusations of witchcraft rife, and fear in the air: it is at dark times like these that peoples principles and moral standings are stretched – sometimes to breaking point – and much can be learnt of the nature of moral dilemmas in a play such as The Crucible, set during such turmoil. Miller uses the hardship present in 1692 and in his play to teach ordinary people – from any era – about such timeless issues as whether one should conform or break away from society, the causes and implications of scapegoating, and the importance of name…

Uses a wide range of text conventions, including grammatical and spelling conventions, appropriately, effectively, and with accuracy.

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text. Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers.

As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.
Ministry of Education, 2003a, p.136.

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners. Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. p. 29.

Using language features with control: Developing independent learners

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Forming intentions

• What is the purpose of the writing task?
• What do I know about the topic or ideas?
• Who is the audience, and what do I want them to know about the topic and the ideas?
• What do I need to find out?
• How can I put my information into the appropriate form?
• Composing a text
• What are the main ideas I want to include?
• What supporting examples, evidence, details, or data will I need to include?
• How should I structure my ideas?
• How can I make my writing clear and effective?
• What language or subject-specific vocabulary will I need to include?

Revising

• After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
• Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
• Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
• Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
• Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
• Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?

Publishing

• What is the most effective way to publish or present my material?
• How will I check that it is complete, accurate, and ready for sharing?

Throughout the writing process, the students should be thinking about what they can do by themselves and what they need support with. They may want to use their learning log to help with this thinking.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. p.135.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

The student uses text conventions, [including simple diction and diary style to convey the narrator’s perspective] appropriately, effectively, and with accuracy.

Extract from Exemplar C:

Do you remember the time you drove me to your bach? You picked me up after school in your little blue Honda. I wore my new red jersey to make myself look better. You wore your work clothes and you still looked good. We stopped off at my house and my brother peeked through the crack in the door. He didn't know who you were. I didn't tell him. When we got back in the car Mum came outside with a jacket. ‘Wear it just in case,' she said. ‘It might get cold'. We drove off down the street listening to the thumping of your car stereo's subs. You were so proud of them. They gave me a headache.

Example 2 

NCEA English Externals Exemplars Level 3: Exemplar 2 AS 90721

The student uses a wide range of written text conventions [sophisticated, pertinent choice of vocabulary; controlled and fluent use of a wide range of syntax] including grammatical and spelling conventions, appropriately, effectively and with accuracy in a piece of transactional writing.

Student introduction to essay on The Crucible :

To what extent do you agree that plays are written to teach us about ordinary people and their moral dilemmas? Discuss your views with reference to a non-Shakespearean play (or plays) you have studied.According to Marion Starkey (author of The Devil in Massachusetts), the Salem witch trials of 1692 are “an allegory of our times”. And Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, with its strong and perceptive insight into the moral dilemmas of ordinary people, clearly illustrates the truth of this statement. 1692 in Salem was a trying time for all involved, with accusations of witchcraft rife, and fear in the air: it is at dark times like these that peoples principles and moral standings are stretched – sometimes to breaking point – and much can be learnt of the nature of moral dilemmas in a play such as The Crucible, set during such turmoil. Miller uses the hardship present in 1692 and in his play to teach ordinary people – from any era – about such timeless issues as whether one should conform or break away from society, the causes and implications of scapegoating, and the importance of name…

Example 3

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

Print and DVD resource published by the Ministry of Education 2007 [provided free to all secondary schools] The sample feature article demonstrates how a wide range of written text conventions [sophisticated, pertinent choice of vocabulary; controlled and fluent use of a wide range of syntax] including grammatical and spelling conventions, appropriately, effectively and with accuracy can be used in a piece of transactional writing.

Extract from The Writer’s Perspective, p.67:

Speaking with Joy Cowley is like being with a wise aunty or a loved teacher. She’s a reassuring presence and somehow instantly familiar. But she’s a woman of clear views, too, and a writer with a strong sense of responsibility to her audience.Joy’s audience is primarily children. Arguably, she’s New Zealand’s best-known writer for young people. Parents and children alike love Greedy Cat, Mrs Wishy Washy, Shadrach the old draft horse, and the rumbustious Wild West family - just a few in the parade of Cowley fictional characters - but it’s the child reader that Joy is most concerned with.  

Organises and develops ideas and information for a particular purpose or effect, using the characteristics and conventions of a range of text forms with control.

What do I need to know?

Knowing about the writing process

Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. Skilled writers, like skilled readers, draw on their prior knowledge and make connections with new information. They critically analyse and evaluate their work as they clarify their ideas, choose vocabulary, and compose and revise a text.

Students need to develop knowledge and a range of literacy and thinking strategies in order to become effective writers. As students come to see, with their teacher’s help, that writing is like a dialogue between the writer and the developing text, they become increasingly critical readers of their own texts. Just as good readers constantly question the author or the text, good writers, too, ask themselves questions. Effective teachers deliberately promote such questioning through planned activities.

Ministry of Education, 2003a, p.136.

Writing, like reading, develops from oral language, but written language is often quite different from spoken language. Speech is usually more informal and repetitive than written language, and people often speak in phrases rather than in complete sentences. Speakers make use of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help get their message across, and they can judge whether they are communicating successfully by observing the responses of the listeners.

Writers do not have this immediacy of communication and rely on writing conventions and stylistic devices to communicate their ideas.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education 2004. p.129. 

Developing independent writers

Students need to know not only what they are doing but also how to do it and why they are doing it. With this knowledge, they are more able to monitor their own writing and to evaluate their finished product. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions about their writing.

Forming intentions

• What is the purpose of the writing task?
• What do I know about the topic or ideas?
• Who is the audience, and what do I want them to know about the topic and the ideas?
• What do I need to find out?
• How can I put my information into the appropriate form?

Composing a text

• What are the main ideas I want to include?
• What supporting examples, evidence, details, or data will I need to include?
• How should I structure my ideas?
• How can I make my writing clear and effective?
• What language or subject-specific vocabulary will I need to include?

Revising

• After writing the first draft, can I see how to improve it?
• Does my text make sense at word, sentence, and whole-text level?
• Are my ideas appropriate and supported?
• Do I need to reorganise my sentences or paragraphs?
•  Are the language and vocabulary appropriate for the purpose?
•  Are the spelling, grammar, and punctuation correct?

Publishing

• What is the most effective way to publish or present my material?
• How will I check that it is complete, accurate, and ready for sharing?

Throughout the writing process, the students should be thinking about what they can do by themselves and what they need support with. They may want to use their learning log to help with this thinking. 
Effective Literacy Strategies for Years 9-13, Ministry of Education, 2004. p.135. 

Features of text forms

Teaching about text forms can help students understand how text is structured and why. We need to be careful, however, to be flexible about the features in a text form. Authentic text forms are often mixed and text forms evolve and change.

What does it look like?

Example 1

Tricksters, Conjurors, Skydancers: Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby and Margaret Mahy in conversation with Kate de Goldi
Print and DVD resource available from  Down the Back of the Chair

Print and DVD resource published by the Ministry of Education 2007 [provided free to all secondary schools]. After studying the structure of Kate de Goldi’s feature article on Joy Cowley, students are guided to organise and develop their own ideas in their feature articles, using the characteristics and conventions of this text form with control.

Extract from Interviewing and Writing, p.68.

Follow a similar process outlined here after completing your interview. You are writing for a readership of other senior English students and your teacher. Your feature should be at least 600 words long.

Your writing will:

• develop and sustain one or more central ideas throughout
• be craftedto achieve a stylistic coherence through the deliberate use of a range of language techniques [for example, selection of vocabulary; controlled use of syntax]
• be structured clearly and effectively, paying attention to developing an effective opening and ending.

Example 2

Te Kete Ipurangi - Meeting Kurt (Word 160KB)

In her short story, a student organises and develops her ideas using the characteristics and conventions of this text form with control as she integrates the narrator’s perspective on recollections of previous events and present time.  

Extract from Exemplar B:

 …Other reasons for my delightful, one way, no return ticket South Canterbury scenic trip were based on several irreversible personality flaws and misdemeanours. My bad points, preached the Parents, were doing awful things like skipping school, beating up my little sister (this was because Mum loved her best), my friends (Mum’s enemies) and smoking. And of course “a better education." Without all the….. distractions.” I glanced down upon the Parents. One thing I liked about buses was their height. That height gave a different perspective on the world. Looking down on the Parents amongst the chewing gum splotched concrete and suitcases, I imagined what they might do or say. Of course Mother would make a mention of this morning's events, perhaps later at morning tea. It would seem rather uncaring of her to let the morning pass as if it was ordinary. Some may view this as an uncaring attitude. Uncaring attitudes meant psychological dysfunction in employees, leading to a lower work output and placing greater stress on the family as anxiety levels rose. These days you could put anything down to bad office relations, or just bad relations…

Example 3

Te Kete Ipurangi - Screen Time (Word 148KB)

In his film review of Antone Won, a student organises and develops their ideas, using the characteristics and conventions of this text form with control. The paragraphs are well structured, where the opening sentence clearly introduces the central point to follow. An appropriate conclusion confirms the reviewer’s positive perspective developed throughout the review.

Extract from student exemplar C [closing paragraphs]:

...However, you realise that the relationship between psychiatrist and patient is not one-sided. Through this relationship the two teach each other things along the way. There are the problems within the marriage of Dr. Davenport and his wife, Berta (Salli Richardson). There are issues in their past too, and Davenport and Fisher are in therapy together. You can really feel the bond forming between Davenport and Fisher and this is how the emotions are conveyed in the film. Davenport becomes a father figure for Fisher, who has lived his whole life with no male figure to look up to, and Fisher becomes the son Davenport and his wife never had. You have seen in the past how well Washington can play the role of a strong male figure in other films such as John Q and The Bone Collector, and he turns in another strong performance in Antwone Fisher. Despite the clichéd happy ending, Antwone Fisher doesn’t cross the line to become too syrupy. For most of the film, the movie produces emotional honesty and Denzel Washington has made a solid debut as a director. Some of the events of Fisher's real life story may have been fictionalised in the name of producing a better story, but there's little doubt that this tale of genuine human courage will be enjoyed by nearly everyone who sees it.  

Example 4

Te Kete Ipurangi - Say it On Words (Word 152KB)

The activity guides students to organise and develop their ideas about their language research and to present them using the characteristics and conventions of an oral presentation with control..

Welcome to Ready to Read Phonics Plus - The start of the pathway to reading.

Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai
Nurture the seed and it will blossom

Ready to Read Phonics Plus is organised in four phases
From kākano the seed,
through tupu the seedling,
māhuri the sapling
to rākau the tree.

Your young readers enter at the phase they are ready for.

They will progress to the next phase at the right pace for them before moving onto the familiar Ready to Read Colour Wheel books.

Ready to Read Phonics Plus emphasises word recognition. They give young readers the tools to “crack the code” as they move into increasing reading comprehension.

Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book adds new phonic knowledge.

They will give children the chance to practise what has already been learnt.

Here is a Kākano, or first phase story – “Get to the Vet”.

I’ll quickly read through the story for you, before we look at the teaching moments in more detail.

Nat’s cat has a bad leg. His leg is cut.

“Let’s get him to the vet,” says Dad.

The cat sits in the van.

“The cut is bad,” says the vet.

“He needs a jab.”

The cat licks his leg.

“Ka pai,” says Nat.

Now let’s look at “Get to the Vet” more closely, and see the learning opportunities along the way.

Before starting, children will be taught target sounds. In “Get to the Vet” these are:

(enunciates "v" sound)

(enunciates "j" sound)

and (enunciates "l" sound)

Children can also practise reading the letter sound patterns they have already learned.

Read the story aloud together and point to each word as it is read.

There are two types of word in this story.

Regular decodable words like “cat” and “bad”. Support the children to sound these words out and then blend the sounds to form the word.

(enunciates "c" sound)

(enunciates "a" sound)

(enunciates "t" sound)

Sounding the words out like this builds phonological awareness and decoding knowledge.

The other type are high use non-decodable words – such as “has” and “is” – and these you can simply pre-teach.

Continue to focus on decoding through the rest of the book.

After reading the book, there are other activities you can do to support vocabulary, phonological awareness and spelling.

For example “bad” – ask them to think of other words with a similar meaning (like “sore”) and have them use the words in the sentence.

You can also draw attention to words that can be changed – for example “cut” can change to “cuts” or “cutting”. Show the part of the word that stays the same and the bit that is different. Have them use the different words in a sentence.

“Let’s get him to the vet,” says Dad. Support children to listen and spot where the sound changes in words. Use the letters here to spell and read the words.

“If this word spells “vet”, can you spell “pet”?

If this word spells “pet”, can you spell “pat”?”

These are great stories to help generate discussion. “How do you think the cat may have hurt his leg?” Maybe the reader has a pet and has taken it to the vet. Talk about what a vet does to help animals.

Also, draw attention to words that are part of the picture. Discuss how these help tell the story.

Finally ask the children to retell the story to friends or family. Use the picture cues to prompt if necessary.

Give them plenty of praise and encouragement.

Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book comes with great teaching notes. These have heaps of ideas about how you can use the books to engage your children with word recognition and language comprehension.

Mā te manaakitanga a te whānau e puāwai ai te tangata

With the aroha and support of the collective, the potential of the individual will be realised

Mā te wā

Welcome to Ready to Read Phonics Plus – the start of the pathway to reading.

Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai

Nurture the seed and it will blossom

Ready to Read Phonics Plus is organised in four phases –
From kākano the seed,
through tupu the seedling,
māhuri the sapling,
to rākau the tree.

Your young readers enter at the phase they are ready for. They will progress to the next phases at the right pace for them, before moving onto the familiar Ready to Read Colour Wheel books.

Ready to Read Phonics Plus emphasises word recognition. They give young readers the tools to “crack the code” as they move into increasing reading comprehension.

Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book adds new phonic knowledge. They will give children the chance to practise what has already been learnt.

Here is another Kākano, or first phase story – “Nan in a Net”.

I will quickly read through the story for you, before we look at the teaching moments in more detail.

Nan is in bed.

“Get up” says Tāne.

“Let’s go!”

Can Nan nap?

No! Nan is up.

Nan and Tāne go to the awa.

Tāne gets the net.

Nan cuts a bun.

Nan naps.

The net tips onto Nan!

“Let me out!” says Nan.

Tāne tugs the net.

Nan is out.

Now let’s look at “Nan in a Net” more closely.

There are quite a few target sounds in this book to practise together first:

"c"                   "l"                  "n"                  "b"                  "s"                  "i"                  "u"

Children can also practise reading the letter sound patterns they have already learned.

Read the story aloud together and point out each word as you read.

There are two types of word in this story.

Sound out the regular decodable words  like “Nan” and “bed”.  Support children to sound these words out and then blend the sounds to form the word

N–a–n "Nan"

Give plenty of praise and encourage re-reading to build fluency.

Simply say the high use non-decodable words – such as “says” and “is”.

Continue to focus on decoding through the rest of the book.

After reading, there are other activities you can do to support vocabulary, phonological awareness and spelling.

For example, the start of this story provides a great discussion point once the book has been read.

Why do you think Tāne was so keen to get an early start? Has there been a time when you were really excited and you had to get up early?

As children read, practise segmenting and blending the sounds to make a word. Say “Let’s say the sounds together in each word I say”

c–a–n  "can"

n–a–p  "nap"

Help children find the words you are segmenting.

"Can Nan nap?" Draw attention to the question mark and how it changes the way the sentence is said. “Can you hear the way my voice goes up at the end?”

"Nan and Tāne go to the awa." After children have read the book, talk about the word awa, and how to say it. Find out the name of an awa that may be close to home or school, or that children associate with.

"Tāne gets the net." If you need to, help children see where the sound changes in the word. Using “net”, have them sound out b–e–t, g–e–t and l–e–t by changing the first letter. Prompt with 'if this word spells “net” can you spell “get”?'

Nan cuts a bun. After reading the book you can talk about how words can change – “cut” to “cuts” or “cutting”.  Try to make different sentences using these different words.

"Nan naps" Talk about the word “nap” and what it means. “What other words mean the same thing?" "Can you put them into a sentence?"

Finally, after reading, ask children to retell the story to friends or family. Use the picture cues to prompt if necessary. Give them plenty of praise and encouragement.

Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book comes with great teaching notes. These have heaps of ideas about how you can use the books to engage your children with word recognition and language comprehension.

Mā te manaakitanga a te whānau e puāwai ai te tangata

With the aroha and support of the collective, the potential of the individual will be realised

Mā te wā

Reading aloud from the best of children’s literature should be a daily part of every classroom programme at all levels. Listening to a story told or read aloud well is a captivating experience.

Reading aloud to children frees them from the labour of decoding and supports them in becoming active listeners, totally engaged and immersed in the text. As children create meaning from a text by making connections between what they already know and what they hear, they develop new knowledge and awareness. They enrich their vocabulary by hearing new words in context and familiar words used in new ways, and they develop new insights into the way language works (for example, how words can be ordered and how imagery can be used) and into the different text forms. A great deal of implicit learning occurs when children are read to.

Reading aloud is appropriate for all students, including those who already read accurately and fluently. This teaching approach can be used effectively with both large and small groups. Students who have had limited experiences with books, or who are receptive rather than active learners, can benefit when they are read to in small groups and the teacher can encourage them to engage with the text and respond to it actively.

Reading to children is an approach that can be used strategically in order to:

• promote and foster a love of reading 
• develop vocabulary and a knowledge of book language and text forms 
• develop awareness of the sounds, rhythms, and patterns of language 
• engage children in conversations about texts 
• encourage children to respond imaginatively to a variety of texts 
• promote oral language development 
• develop skills in listening comprehension and critical thinking 
• provide opportunities for children to visualise aspects of a text 
• help children to develop effective strategies for dealing with unfamiliar
• vocabulary and building meaning 
• support children who are learning English 
• create opportunities for retelling and ideas for writing.

Choosing texts

When selecting texts for reading to children, teachers are guided by their own instructional objectives and by the students’ interests and cultural values. Refer to page 114 in chapter 5 for discussion about the importance of using a range and variety of texts.

Reading the text

The way the teacher reads aloud is very important. Teachers may need to practise so that they know the story well and can relax and concentrate on reading expressively. Such reading provides a good model for students and conveys many implicit messages about literacy learning. Above all, it demonstrates in the best possible way that reading is important and that books are a source of delight.

Supporting students’ responses

Depending on their teaching objectives, the nature of the text, and the students’ interest, the teacher may encourage the students’ responses and their predictions or conversations about the text (without interrupting the flow of the text and the listeners’ enjoyment). Effective teachers enable their students to savour the experience, share their enthusiasm, and reflect on new words, expressions, or ideas.

Shared reading is an essential component of the daily literacy programme. It allows for a high degree of interaction and is a great way for teachers to help students to increase their understanding of themselves as text users. It’s an effective approach, which can be used with both large groups and small groups to develop students’ strategies and their knowledge of how written texts work (see page 27).

When a teacher reads to students, the students participate as active listeners. In shared reading, the teacher and the students read a text together. The teacher leads the reading, and the students follow with their eyes, actively listening, and join in as they become familiar with words, phrases, or concepts. All the participants need to be able to see the text, which is usually enlarged. The teacher’s support enables the students to behave like readers and enjoy the text even though they may not yet be able to read it comfortably on their own.

Shared reading conveys messages about the joys of reading. It also provides a supportive instructional setting in which teachers can systematically and purposefully:

• develop positive attitudes towards reading 
• model fluent, expressive reading 
• deliberately teach specific strategies for reading 
• develop students’ awareness of visual and phonological information 
• teach specific vocabulary and identify particular word features 
• build students’ understanding of text forms and structures 
• encourage thoughtful and personal responses, including critical responses, to text 
• develop a sense of community in the classroom 
• expose students to a wide range of texts.

The same text can be used several times in successive shared reading sessions, with a different focus each time to meet new goals. As the students become familiar with the text, they gradually take more responsibility for reading it themselves.

Students for whom English is a new language can participate confidently in shared reading. They attend to the illustrations, diagrams, and photographs while hearing the language used in an enjoyable and authentic context.

Shared reading provides opportunities for teachers to observe how their students interact with texts. It also allows teachers to plan purposeful ways to develop students’ use of the sources of information in text (see pages 28–31) in a supportive context. It’s an ideal setting in which to introduce and reinforce information about the conventions of print (see page 33), about strategies for solving unknown words, and about sound patterns in spoken language (see pages 32–37) or spelling patterns in written language (see pages 144–148). Refer also to the sections on shared reading in the Ministry of Education’s Ready to Read Teacher Support Material).

Choosing texts

A wide range of different types of text should be selected for shared reading. Each text should be chosen to suit one or more specific instructional purposes. From the beginning years, the range should include non-fiction. Shared reading can also incorporate handmade texts, poems, songs, pieces from magazines, and articles from newspapers – perhaps enlarged for use on the overhead projector. An overhead projector can also be used to display the menus, web pages, and icons that enable readers to navigate electronic texts on the Internet.

Shared reading sessions

A shared reading session may last as long as twenty minutes, depending on the purposes, the time of day, and the students’ interest. Alternatively, it may be a brief session, simply to savour a favourite text or to reread something that captures the moment.

Introducing the text

A text should be introduced in a way that builds eagerness and a sense of anticipation. Keeping the introduction brief helps the students to relate the text to their experience and to predict something of its meaning and structure. The purpose for reading the text should be shared with the students.

Reading the text

The first reading should focus on the students’ enjoyment and understanding of the text. With texts that have a catchy rhythm and repetitive pattern, the students can be encouraged to join in on the first reading. Teachers often engage learners by pausing and asking them to predict what may happen next or to share their responses briefly.

In subsequent readings, the teacher can focus on specific features or learning strategies that they have identified for teaching or reinforcement with the group. This could involve writing words on the whiteboard to explore spelling patterns or letter-sound relationships. (A masking device may be used to isolate letters, words, or parts of words.) Or the focus could be on features of layout, such as bold headings, and on helping the students to find out how to use these features in their reading and their writing. Another focus could be on close reading of a particular passage to help the students identify the main points or the words that indicate a particular character’s point of view.

Following up

Shared reading texts should be made available after the reading so that the students can enjoy them independently. Small groups can use enlarged texts and charts (or audio versions if these are available) to replicate the shared reading experience. The students can take turns to lead the group in reading, using a pointer.

Some texts lend themselves to further activities, depending on the teacher’s objectives. Activities might include:

• shared writing modelled on the text 
• word-level work, such as listing words that have the same rime 
• retelling the story to a small group 
• dramatising episodes of the story 
• improvising music to accompany a dramatisation of the story.

In any literacy programme, guided reading has a central role in leading students towards independence in reading. The focused group setting enables the teacher to provide strategic instruction in decoding, making meaning, and thinking critically.

During guided reading, the teacher works with a small group of students who have similar instructional needs so that they are supported in reading a text successfully by themselves. Each student has a copy of the text. It should contain some challenges, which should be at a level that the students can manage as they individually read the text in the supportive situation.

Guided reading provides a framework in which teachers can use instructional strategies to:

• help students to develop an understanding of what is involved in reading and an expectation of success 
• help students to learn, practise, and integrate their reading strategies 
• help students to read new text successfully 
• monitor students closely while they engage with and process texts 
• develop students’ comprehension of and critical responses to text 
• build students’ confidence as independent readers 
• show students how the processes of reading and writing are integral to each other.

Students gain most from guided reading when they have developed a number of understandings about text. These are usually best gained through shared reading and oral language activities. Observation and monitoring of what the student knows and can do will guide the teacher’s decision about when to begin the more intensive guided reading approach.

Forming groups for guided reading demands thought and judgment. Each group should be small enough for intensive support, but there should not be so many groups that class management becomes unwieldy. Since students progress at different rates, guided reading groups will change as the students’ competencies change.

Before the session

Deciding on the focus or purpose of the session

Both the teacher and the students need to be clear about the purpose for reading the text. The focus for instruction could be, for example, on:

• using word-level information to decode new words 
• using illustrations to support or extend understanding of a text 
• looking at character development in a story 
• predicting the outcome of a story 
• using a table of contents, chart, or table 
• interpreting quotation or question marks 
• introducing a new text form 
• inferring from actions or dialogue.

Selecting an appropriate text

Given the central role of texts in literacy development, text selection is a crucial step. Teachers base their selection on their instructional objectives and on their knowledge of the learners, ensuring that the texts are appropriate to the students’ learning needs and relate to their interests and experiences. Generally, the text will be new to the students, although beginning readers may have met it before in shared reading. (Sometimes, though, it is appropriate to select familiar material in order to focus on a specific language or literary feature.) As a general rule, texts for guided reading should be at a level where students have no more than five to ten difficulties in every hundred words. See chapter 5 for discussion of text features and of the supports and challenges in texts.

Planning for the session

Planning for the session involves:

• deciding how to introduce the text 
• identifying challenges that the text might present and deciding how to address them 
• considering how to generate discussion to take the students further into the text 
• deciding on related follow-up activities if appropriate.

During the session

Introducing the text

The introduction to the session should be brief and build a sense of expectancy. It should share the purpose for the reading and focus on relating the text to the students’ experiences and interests. The teacher may discuss or explain particular features or potential challenges that the students may need help with, such as names of characters, captions for diagrams, or technical terms.

The teacher then sets the reading task by directing the group to read the text or a section of it and telling them what they are to think about or find out.

Reading the text

The students take responsibility for reading the text themselves individually. With longer texts, where more complex challenges may arise, the reading can be “chunked” into two or more sections, with a brief discussion between sections to sustain comprehension. As they become more fluent, the students may be encouraged to read silently.

During the reading, as they monitor each member of the group, the teacher can encourage the students by prompting them to use the strategies that they have learned. The teacher may move alongside a student to check how they are processing the text. But, during the reading, the teacher should intervene only when necessary. A short, purposeful task for those who are likely to finish earlier than others is useful.

Discussing the text

Generating purposeful, stimulating discussion around a text is perhaps the greatest challenge in guided reading. Focused discussion is central to this approach, because a fundamental purpose of guided reading is to enhance each student’s understanding of what they are reading. The focus and length of the discussion will reflect the shared goal for the session, the level of the students’ interest and engagement, and the demands of the text.

The teacher’s role is to:

• maintain the focus by skilled use of questioning, prompting, or modelling of what good readers do 
• encourage the students’ personal responses and sharing of insights 
• encourage genuine conversations in which responses and points of view are valued 
• help the students to explore text features and challenges 
• encourage the students to share how they worked out unknown words or drew inferences from the text 
• develop the students’ comprehension and critical thinking 
• probe the students’ understandings and ask them to clarify their statements where necessary 
• ask the students to justify a statement or opinion by going back to the text 
• model ways of responding critically to text (for example, by using questions or thought-provoking comments) 
• foster enjoyment of the text and a sense of discovery 
• give feedback that is specific, that informs, and that builds further understanding.

For beginning readers, the focus is on getting through the reading successfully. As students become more fluent, more time will be spent in discussion and comparatively less in reading. But, from the beginning, students should expect to think and talk about what they are reading. The discussion should be enjoyable and engaging for both students and teachers.

Using an easel or whiteboard gives a visual focus, for example, when:

• examining word-level features, such as letter-sound relationships, spelling patterns, onsets and rimes, and new vocabulary 
• recording and plotting the main ideas or facts in the text 
• noting words or ideas that sparked debate, to return to later.

See also the section about classroom conversations on pages 88–89 and refer to Guided Reading: Years 1–4, pages 45–49.

Concluding the session

At the end of a guided reading session, it’s important to review, with the group, the original purpose of the session and to ensure that it has been met. It’s also valuable to encourage the students to reflect on their learning and talk about it so that they develop awareness of how to use and control what they know and can do. This will enable them to increasingly monitor their own progress.

After the session

Most teachers make the book available for the students to reread to a buddy or by themselves. Often, children also take the book home to share with their family. These repeated readings give the students opportunities to enjoy the text personally, practise newly acquired strategies, absorb new information, and develop fluency.

It is valuable to jot down observations on individual students’ progress and to note teaching points for the future.

The text may lend itself to further activities. These may be planned beforehand to help meet the teacher’s objectives, but others may arise as result of monitoring during the session. Such activities may include:

• making a timeline, story map, chart, or graph 
• writing character sketches 
• sorting or generating word lists, such as “words beginning with a prefix” (for example, “un-”) 
• retelling the text or innovating on the text 
• creating art work and adding captions 
• reading other texts with a similar theme or form 
• a mini-lesson to teach or reinforce a reading strategy.

However, often the reading is sufficient in itself, and the best follow-up activity is simply lots more reading.

Reading at home and at school should be relaxed and enjoyable. Parents and teachers demonstrate that they value reading when they read themselves and also make sure that students have time to enjoy reading.

For students, independent reading of material they choose themselves:

• builds the habit of reading 
• allows them to practise reading strategies with books that interest them 
• builds their vocabulary and helps comprehension 
• helps them to sustain concentrated reading for a set time 
• promotes fluency 
• puts the responsibility for solving problems with words and meaning into their own hands 
• helps to build their confidence about trying unfamiliar books.

Studies have documented evidence linking children’s access to books, and the amount of reading that they do, to their achievement in reading. Choosing to read recreationally is also associated with high rates of achievement.

A set time in the daily routine for independent reading by individual students is an essential part of the classroom literacy programme. If they are to become lifelong readers, students need to choose to read, select their own texts, and share what they have read. Ready access to a wide range of interesting materials that they can read by themselves is also important because it enables the students to choose to read independently whenever an opportunity arises. Teachers need to make it clear that students benefit greatly when they engage in recreational reading, both in and out of school.

The teacher needs to establish routines and expectations so that all students move naturally from reading aloud to silent reading. Silent, independent reading has proven benefits and is associated with student achievement. As their students gain fluency and independence, teachers should plan to model and teach silent and attentive reading. Students also achieve better when they see their teacher reading independently for pleasure.

During independent reading, teachers should observe the students’ reading behaviour and monitor their interest and enthusiasm, their selection of texts, their understanding of what they read, and the amount of reading they do. This will inform the teacher’s future guidance of each student’s reading.

Informal, focused individual or small-group conferences can yield valuable information about what the students are reading, whether they are setting themselves new challenges, and how they are enjoying the books they choose. The teacher may use a student’s reading log, for example, when prompting and questioning, to draw the student’s attention to their patterns of reading and to ways of extending these patterns. However, it’s important at all times to avoid being intrusive – independent reading is intensely personal and should focus on enjoyment.

Reciprocal teaching is a useful small-group procedure to help improve the comprehension and critical thinking of fluent readers. Studies have shown that when students take part in reciprocal teaching of reading, their comprehension improves (including their listening comprehension) and they transfer the learning into other reading contexts. Reciprocal teaching has been found to be effective in improving the achievement of learners from diverse backgrounds. It involves four explicit strategies for reading comprehension:

• formulating questions to stimulate thoughtful discussion 
• clarifying ideas in the text 
• predicting what might follow, using prior knowledge and information in the text 
• summarising information in the text.

The teacher initially leads the group, explaining and modelling the strategies to show how the reader actively constructs meaning. The students gradually take over more and more of the responsibility by taking turns to lead the group and generate discussion as the group members jointly examine and interpret a text.

Many teachers use literature circles as a way of encouraging their students to think and talk about a wide range of texts. As students develop their skills in reading and in expressing ideas, they can join in these groups. In a literature circle, the students generate the discussion, which is based on their own interpretations of the text. Small groups of students read the same book independently and share their personal responses and interpretations with others in the group. Having the students mark parts of the book helps to focus their discussion of a text, for example, where they:

• find a passage confusing 
• want to ask the group questions about the plot, characters, or information 
• can relate an event in the book to personal experience 
• find the language beautiful or memorable 
• find a part of the story very exciting, entertaining, or moving 
• want to talk about a diagram or a dramatic photograph.