Week 9 Term 2 - Let's get it WRITE (Year 10 Writing Program) - Setting Sail

Recap: Phase 1 'The Launch'

Phase 1 of 'Let's get it WRITE' - 'The Launch' - focuses on the basic and essential fundamental elements with writing. This part of journey enables students to explore what is a text, finding word groups, sentences, understanding the difference between independent/dependent clauses and verb/verbal groups. Essentially this phase is geared towards the learning or relearning of the basic elements of writing.

Phase 2: 'Setting Sail' 

The second phase of 'Let's get it WRITE' - 'Setting Sail' - is where the practice and learning from phase 1 becomes the foundation for the crafting of a text. In this phase the students are encourage to craft a text - whether it is a creative, formal, opinion, explanation piece of writing - utilising the key components of writing that was shared and unpacked in phase 1. At the beginning of the second phase the students will need to answer the following questions:

1) What is that you really want to write about?
2) What kind of text do you want to craft? Creative, formal, poetry?
3) Who is the audience?
4) What is the topic?
5) What is the purpose of your text?

This is an integral part of 'Setting Sail'. I believe that writing can be powerful when one is given the freedom to write about anything that they want. Initially the program was geared towards the students writing an explanation piece but I think that the freedom to choose the topic, audience and purpose of your text is engaging and powerful.

Once the student has decided on the type of text they want to craft, a focus on characterization and paragraph analysis will take place. The characterization section is particularly great because the students - whether they are crafting a text on a character or not - will have an opportunity to explore characterization and how to use clauses, sophisticated word groups and appropriate sentence types when describing someone. I would like to see the students choose someone that they know and write a characterization piece on them.

Review: How is it going so far?

In our most recent department meeting we asked the team how the first phase of 'Let's it get it WRITE' has been for them and their students. The overall feedback was positive and the student response has been positive too. I have spoken with a few Year 10 students this week about the program and I wanted to know what they thought of it. Here are some gems from the student feedback: 

"I am learning about texts, clauses and word groups. It is good for my learning because it makes my writing better."

"It is pretty all good - I like learning about it because it helps me find sentences easier" 

So far so good. The analogy behind the program is based on the concept of 'journeys'. It is important to take time and to make time in order for the writing to develop. I look forward to reading some of our student's writing!