Teaching literacy in English: Stage 4

Unit: Writing persuasive text

Part A: Preparing to write - strategies to support students experiencing difficulties

	Avoidance tactics Avoidance and delaying behaviours are dramatically reduced by making the students responsible for completing the task in 20 minutes. Fluency is encouraged and this extends skill development and raises expectations. A clock is an external reference. This prevents codependency i.e. the teacher as nagger and the student as blocker.
	Avoidance Begin the sentence for reluctant students by asking them to verbalise a thought and if necessary, by starting the sentence or writing the whole sentence for the student and asking the student: “What goes at the end of the sentence?” Alternatively, leave the student with the sentence at the point of known [don’t do for the student what they can do for themselves].
	Handwriting Strategy Getting Ready to Work (serious tool bag) Technology Suggestions A slim pencil bag with two sharpened pencils, an eraser and sharpener is all that is necessary for this writing strategy. When students have these, they are positioned to be effective writers. Store elsewhere the other implements that often take too much of the limited desk space and are used for different purposes e.g. coloured pencils, highlighters, textas.
	If a work sample has been completed but not correctly structured, then with the child's permission, the group could listen to the text read out aloud and suggest where the first idea ends. The teacher would use a highlighter pen to indicate this idea and would swap highlighters as the group identified each new idea.
	Use "Rainbow Writing" to help children gain a sense of sentence. Allow students to use coloured pens to indicate sentence boundaries. "Choose one colour for the first sentence. Write your first idea. FULLSTOP. Now swap colours. Write your next idea. FULLSTOP.
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