Teaching Writing - Week 6 - Teaching Writing to Young Learners

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 6 of the course Teaching Writing for the Bachelor's in English Teaching at ULACIT in term IIC 2023. In this class we will talk about the characteristics of young learners and explore relevant techniques for teaching writing to this unique population. We will also take time to review your fifth creation and preview the instructions for your first lesson planning assignment.

Today's Goals:

• Review your fifth writing activity creation.
• Explore the defining characteristics of young learners and relevant strategies for teaching them writing.
• Clarify the instructions for your first lesson planning assignment.

Guiding Questions:

• How can micro-journaling provide options for student writing development.
• How can I provide effective writing instruction for young learners?
• How can I organize a reading and writing lesson for children?

Task 1: Activity Type Demo - Micro-Jounraling Activity

Nearly every week of this course you will submit a unit writing activity creation in order to build a portfolio of writing activity types. 

• Characteristics: What are the features of micro-journaling tasks?
• Example: What activity did you create?
• Strengths: In what ways are micro-journaling tasks potentially beneficial?
• Challenges: What potential limitations or challenges are associated with them?

• Additional Considerations: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Project Check-in

Remember, you should already be thinking about your final Learner Needs and Context Analysis project. Last week we talked about some strategies to gather useful information about your students' writing needs and preferences. Have you had the chance to think about the design of your data collection instruments?

• Your Course Project: CLICK HERE

Task 3: Reading Exploration - Teaching Reading and Writing (to YL's)

Let's discuss the following questions regarding the assigned reading for this week, "Teaching Reading and Writing".

• What are YLs like?: Click the link below to do a matching activity that describes characteristics of young learners and what teachers should do to support them. 

• Group Worksheet: CLICK HERE

• Why Focus on Reading and Writing?: In this week's reading the authors described some of the challenges and benefits of including reading and writing in the young learner classroom. 

• Why do most English for YL classrooms tend to focus more on listening and speaking than reading and writing?
• Why is it important to make the effort to include reading and writing anyway?
• What does it mean to have a print-rich classroom?

• English has a deep orthography.
• Children are developing literacy skills in two languages at once.
• Reading complements writing and vice versa.
• Reading and writing complement listening and reading and vice versa.

• What's the Purpose?: The authors emphasize the importance of context and purpose in designing writing tasks. 

• Quote: "When we write outside of the classroom, we werite because we have something we want to communicate, a purpose for our writing, and a real audience we want to communicate with. But we sometimes forget that when we assign writing in language classes. A way to help us remember to assign authentic writing assignmets is to use FAT-P in explaining those assignments (p. 186)."

• FAT-P

• How can we Guide Learners?: The authors spent several pages describing two categories of writing activities. Read the quote and then discuss the questions.

• Quote: "Even very young children have ideas about how texts are written, and they attempt to create texts based on those ideas; over time, as their understanding of these texts changes, so does their writing (p. 186)."

• What is the difference between controlled and guilded writing activities?
• Why are they both important? 
• What are some examples of each?

• What now?: Read the final quotes from the end of the chapter. 

• Quote: "In a young learner classroom, children can read and then write about what they read (in a range of activities) and they can read what they or other children have written. Reading can be thought of as preparation for writing and writing as producing something for others to read (p. 204)."

• Quote: "As much as possible, in each new unit or lesson plan, a meaningful context for reading and writing should be established before children focus on the smaller elements of written language (p. 205)."

Task 4: Young Learners Reading and Writing Plan

Let's finish today's class by previewing your first lesson planning assignment.

• Assignment Guidelines: CLICK HERE

References: 

Shin, J.K. & Crandall, J. (2014). Teaching English to Young Learners: From Theory to Practice. National Geographic Learning.