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Helping students to make connections between what they know and what they are reading improves their comprehension. Teachers can model making such connections, and prompt students to make links with their own knowledge and experience, when they are introducing and discussing texts for reading and in writing and oral-language activities. When activating students’ prior knowledge for a particular purpose, teachers can help the students to hypothesise, infer, and build their own interpretations as they read.

What readers do

• Think about what they already know about the content and text form and draw on their own cultural knowledge, their experience of the world, and their knowledge of text forms to make meaning.
• Focus on an aspect of the text, for example, a structure, word, phrase, event, or idea that they want to know more about and relate this aspect to their prior knowledge.
• Think about how connecting the aspect of the text to their prior knowledge helps them understand the text better.

How teachers can support learners

• This explanation seems a lot harder to follow than the one we read last week. I’m having to draw on what we found out about … so I can build on that. I’m finding our summary chart really useful.
• What do you already know about …? Let’s record that on our chart. Think about what you know as you read the text and see if the text helps you expand on it in any way.
• You’ll need to dig a bit deeper to work that out. Remember our discussion about persuasion techniques …
• Is there anyone in the text who reminds you of yourself in any way? In what way? What have you had to do to discover this?
• Reread the first two paragraphs to see if you can find a link between what the author says there and what’s in this later section.
• Linking the ideas that Tony’s parents had about him to what you already knew about rock climbing helped you explain why his dad’s comment at the end was so significant.

Hypotheses are expectations or predictions that the reader forms about the text. They are formed before and during the reading. Proficient readers test and revise their hypotheses as they encounter and act upon new information in the text. Depending on the learning goal, a hypothesis may relate to any aspect of the text, for example, its structure, theme, and characterisation, its possible content, or how it engages the reader.

The teacher can usefully model forming a hypothesis when introducing a text. Testing and revising the hypothesis can be modelled later on, during the reading and discussion. This process encourages students to think critically about their own hypotheses, to seek and give feedback about hypotheses, and to revise them in the light of new information. Students often form a hypothesis as a result of asking their own questions about the text.

What readers do

• Use clues in the text, such as the cover, the blurb, or specific language features, to make links to prior knowledge and form a hypothesis or expectation about the text.
• Read to check whether the text supports this hypothesis or expectation.
• Reflect on the hypothesis and revise it if necessary in the light of new information or of the reader’s new thoughts about the hypothesis.

How teachers can support learners

• I’ve noticed in the introduction that there are lots of adjectives that imply sadness. Do you think the author is suggesting a gloomy outcome for the main character?
• Which text form do you think this might be? What clues have you noticed? What makes you think that?
• What do you expect from this title? Think about what you know about the author’s other novels.
• How do the graphics on the screen suggest what the creator of this site might want us to think about?
• You suggested how the author wanted us to feel about global warming at the beginning of the text, and you’ve found clues throughout the text that supported your original hypothesis.

Fluent readers spontaneously and continuously pose questions for themselves and attempt to answer these questions (for example, by forming hypotheses) as they interact with the text. They “talk to themselves” about what they are reading, and they do this automatically. They pose questions for themselves about the unfolding content of the text, about the meaning of parts of the text (including particular words and phrases), or about the significance of specific language features.

Questioning helps to reinforce the habit of reading for a purpose. The teacher can raise students’ awareness of the importance of formulating appropriate questions for themselves by, for example, modelling this strategy during shared reading and asking the students to formulate their own questions that relate to a shared learning goal. Asking questions helps readers to engage with the ideas in the text and with the writer and gives focus to the reading task. After students have read a text, it is useful to help them evaluate the effectiveness of the questions they posed for themselves, to identify the benefits they gained by asking questions as they read, and to give them feedback for further learning.

What readers do

• Focus on an aspect of the text that interests or confuses them.
• Formulate a question that relates to the content or to a selected text feature.
• Record the question, or keep it in mind as they read, so that they can recognise and bring together relevant information as it arises.
• Reflect, as a result of the questions they set themselves, on what they’ve found out and on how this has changed their thinking or helped their comprehension.
• Ask new questions in the light of what they’ve found out.

How teachers can support learners

• We can see that the author has strong views on this. I wonder how he might try to affect our thinking as we read …
• A fluent reader has questions and answers going through their head as they read. This helps them get more involved in the reading and adds to their understanding of the text. While I’m reading this, I’m wondering what the significance of the newspaper cutting might be …
• Tell me a question you asked yourself before you read this part of the text. How did you try to find an answer?
• You set yourself lots of questions for the reading and then found you were skimming and scanning to find answers rather than focusing on the meaning. Let’s look more closely at the sorts of questions that will help you meet your learning goal.

When readers visualise, they connect the ideas in the text with their prior knowledge and experience to create images in their minds. This often means thinking about their senses and using their imagination to see, hear, feel, taste, or smell parts of the text in their minds.

Creating an image can make a text come alive for the reader. The ability to visualise what is being explained or what is happening draws readers into the text. Studies have indicated that creating an image in the memory helps the reader to retain what is read and use it later on.

Readers experiencing difficulties often need help with creating mental images and may not realise how this can help their comprehension. Teachers can support students in visualising by asking questions such as “What image do you see in your head?”, by explicitly drawing attention to descriptive language or a sequence of ideas, and by sharing their own images. Visualising can be supported by creating graphic representations or mind maps of a text.

What readers do

• Identify words that are descriptive or that indicate the content of a text.
• Make connections with prior knowledge and use their awareness of their five senses to create a mental image.
• draw on the mental image and use it to gain a deeper understanding or appreciation of the text.

How teachers can support learners

• The author’s used lots of verbs and adjectives – I’ve connected them to my memory of that enormous storm we had last year. I get a clear picture of the problems they must be facing.
• In my mind, I’m starting to see a pattern in the structure of this text.
• What mental image do you think the author is trying to create in this section? How has she done this?
• I love the three different situations you’ve imagined for using “horrible hands with frozen fingers”; are you intending to follow the recipe to make them and try your ideas out?
• Talk about the setting with your partner. Talk about what you can hear, feel, taste, or smell there – not just what you can see. Share the parts of the text that gave you those ideas.

Inferring means using content in a text, together with existing knowledge, to come to a personal conclusion about something that is not stated explicitly in the text. When the writer provides clues but not all the information, we read “between the lines” to form hypotheses, revise these, understand underlying themes, make critical judgments, and draw conclusions.

The teacher can help students to make inferences by raising their awareness that reading involves more than just literal meaning and by modelling inferential thinking during shared reading or during discussions in guided reading. Or the teacher may pause, when reading a text with students, to draw out clues from the text and prompt the students to make connections between different parts of the text in order to reach a conclusion that makes sense. It’s important to ask students to give evidence from the text that supports their inferences.

What readers do

• Draw on their awareness that some meanings may not be explicit in the text and question the messages of the text as they read.
• Keep in mind their “hunches” about deeper meanings and search for clues or evidence in the text as they continue to read.
• Make links between their developing knowledge of the text and the author’s style (drawing on their sense of where the author is taking the text) in relation to these clues.
• Form hypotheses, based on the links they have made, about implied meanings in the text.
• Reflect on the validity of their inferences by taking account of new evidence or clues that arise as they continue reading.

How teachers can support learners

• Think about how the images in this explanation help us to form ideas about the immense distances described.
• This character seems haughty and supercilious. The way she interacts with the other characters isn’t how I expect people to behave. I’ll read on and check out my tentative thinking about her.
• Find the words that suggest that …
• What do you think is really happening here? What did you have to do to make those inferences?
• Even though the writer doesn’t state her opinion explicitly, you’ve inferred that she doesn’t approve of … You’ve noted the examples that she has used and linked them to your own knowledge of … to help you reach this conclusion.

It is important for readers to recognise that behind every text is a writer, and that the writer has a purpose or reason for writing and a particular point of view. For example, the purpose of the writer may be to:

• provide or obtain information 
• share the excitement of an event 
• persuade or influence the reader or provoke debate 
• create or enter a personal world 
• stimulate the imagination 
• convey important cultural stories or myths 
• entertain or delight the reader.

By supporting students in identifying and reflecting on an author’s purpose and point of view, teachers can help their students to recognise that writers bring their own experiences and insights to their writing. Such activities contribute richly to students’ awareness of the functions of texts and of how authors position readers. They also help students to build the habit of responding thoughtfully to what they read. Students then carry their awareness and thoughtfulness into their writing and use it to help them plan and articulate their own purpose and point of view when writing a text.

What readers do

• Identify themselves with a writer who is writing for a purpose.
• Think about the intended audience of a text and reflect on how this might affect, for example, how the writer chooses what to include and what to leave out.
• Search for specific indicators of the writer’s personal thinking, such as examples of the writer’s choice of content or vocabulary.
• Reflect on this information as they interpret the text.

How teachers can support learners

• We’ve gained an idea of the author’s point of view from the examples of emotive language in the introduction. Keep this in mind as you read on …
• What do you think the writer’s purpose was in writing this text? How does this affect your response to the text?
• Who do you think is the intended audience of this text? How do you know?
• If this text had been written by Jason’s mother rather than Jason, how would it be different?
• When writers feel strongly about a topic, they often try to manipulate their readers so that they are more likely to agree with them. Here are some things to look out for …

Identifying the main idea means determining what is central to a text – what the writer most values or wants to emphasise. In a narrative, this might be the theme or themes, which will probably relate to people and how they live their lives. In a transactional text, it might be the key information or the particular idea about the topic that the writer wants readers to understand. In some transactional text forms, such as reports or letters to the editor, the main idea is often made explicit at the beginning. In fiction, the main idea is more often implied, in a variety of ways, throughout the text. A text may have more than one main idea or theme, but this comprehension strategy involves identifying the idea or ideas that are most important throughout the text, not ideas of lesser importance and not those that feature only in one section of the text.

Identifying the main idea does not mean identifying the topic or content of a text. For example, a story might be about a character breaking his leg, but the main idea (theme) of the text might be about the way the character overcomes adversity or discovers the value of friendship. Often it is relatively easy for a reader to state what a text is about, but it may be more difficult to decide what the main idea is. The reader needs to interpret the writer’s thinking by making connections to their prior knowledge, hypothesising, inferring, and synthesising several aspects of the text in order to identify the main idea.

What readers do

• Identify with the writer as someone who has a main idea to convey (by thinking “Supposing I am the writer of this, what is the main thing that I want the reader to think about?”).
• Search for evidence that indicates what the writer’s main idea may be (including evidence of the writer’s purpose).
• Consider all the evidence in order to decide or hypothesise about what the writer’s main idea is.
• Check their hypothesis as they read, revising it when appropriate.

How teachers can support learners

• So you’ve decided that the writer’s real message isn’t the one he stated at the beginning – and I think you’re right! How did you work that out?
• I think this text is giving us a message about how sometimes it’s OK to break rules. To work this out, I’ve thought about how the writer has got us to sympathise with the main character even though she breaks rules and causes trouble – the emotional language ensures that we’re on her side.
• Track the subheadings and see if there’s a pattern developing to help you work out what the writer thinks is most important.
• What do you think the theme of this text is? What do you think we are meant to be left wondering about at the end? How did you come to this conclusion?
• We’ve come up with two “main ideas” for this text. Let’s go back through the text and find evidence for our thinking. Maybe both of them are right …

Summarising helps the reader to see how information or events are related and to understand the content and structure of a text. The reader identifies the important information or events in a text or part of a text and remembers, retells, or records them in a shortened form, which enables the reader to make connections within the text. A summary brings together the essential content of a text succinctly as a clear overview or outline. For example, a written or oral summary may describe the beginning, middle, and end of a narrative or the main facts from an information text or a specific paragraph.

In order to summarise a text effectively, the reader needs to have a clear idea of its structure and to be able to differentiate between important points and supporting details. To do this, the reader identifies key words, facts, events, or ideas and notes which parts of the text contain the details that go with each of them. When summarising, the reader puts the important points into their own words, using language as economically as possible and avoiding repetition. A summary may support in-depth work with the text.

With certain texts, summarising may not be a useful strategy to support students’ understanding. Some poems or sets of instructions, for example, do not include key points with supporting detail.

What readers do

• Consider the organisation of the text and use it to help them identify the more important points from each section or paragraph.
• State each important point succinctly in their own words, sometimes in their head and sometimes by saying it aloud or writing it down.
• Order and link the important points in a cohesive way that enables them to remember and access the information in order to meet their reading purpose.

How teachers can support learners

• I’ve used some of the visual features of this text, especially the writer’s use of bold print, to help me identify five important points.
• Read this paragraph carefully. What is the key sentence? How do you know?
• You’ve noted the important facts that are discussed in this report. Do you think you also need to summarise both the introduction and the conclusion, or do they just repeat the same information?
• The timeline on page 3 shows you what the key events were between 1900 and 1960. Diagrams are often helpful when you are summarising this kind of text.
• You could use a story map to help you identify the main events in this narrative as you read.
• Does your summary give you a clear overview of the text? Is it brief and easy to read? Is anything important missed out? Is anything repeated? Does it meet your purpose?

When readers take apart a text they have read, examine it from their own viewpoint, and put it back together again, they make it their own. When they compare different texts, drawing out similarities and differences and deciding on the reasons for these, they create a new web of knowledge. As they analyse and synthesise, readers identify ideas, information, or features in a text, reflect on these in relation to their existing knowledge and cultural values (or to ideas from other texts), and form conclusions, interpreting the text’s meaning by drawing ideas together. Analysing and synthesising is a creative process that can enable readers to take ownership of the texts they read and the ideas and information in them.

Analysing and synthesising is a valuable strategy to use when bringing a more critical perspective to a text, for example, during a second reading or subsequent, closer readings.

What readers do

• Identify and reflect on the ideas, features, or structures of a text (or texts) and consider how they link to the other ideas, features, or structures and to the reader’s prior knowledge and experience.
• Look for common elements, for example, similarities in the writer’s use of imagery within a text or similarities in ideas across several texts, in order to reach a conclusion that relates to their learning goal or reading purpose.
• Use this conclusion to inform their thinking and generate new ideas to help them meet their learning goal or reading purpose.

How teachers can support learners

• Work with a partner to identify the part where the mood changes and to find out how the author has created this change of mood.
• You’ve noticed that some reports on how tourism affected the island suggest that it’s harmful and others that it’s benefi cial. Can you account for this? Have you considered the writers’ purposes for each text?
• I’ve been thinking about that coach, what he says and does, how there’s a mystery about his past, the way the writer describes him, and what I would expect a coach to say and do – and I don’t think he can be trusted!
• You’ve suggested to me that the author delivers an important message about responsibility. You’ve worked this out by tracking how Victoria’s character changes, and you’ve supported this with a clear example of how she reacts quite differently to the problem in the last chapter.
• This letter to the editor contains more or less the same facts as the conservation website that we looked at yesterday, but the two texts use the information for a different purpose and audience. The different structures of the texts will give you some clues about what the different purposes are.

Thoughtful readers respond to the texts they read in a personal, informed way. They generalise from the ideas and information in a text and make judgments about them in the light of their prior knowledge and experience (including their experiences of other texts), their cultural values, and their purpose for reading. They examine and evaluate the ideas and information in the text and may consequently go on to confirm, extend, or change their personal views. They may disagree with the message of a text or explain why they find an argument unconvincing (for example, if they feel that the writer has used unsound evidence in an attempt to influence or “position” their thinking).

As students develop information literacy, they learn to recognise relevant and valid information, interpret it, and evaluate it in terms of its usefulness and reliability (see page 38). Thoughtful readers also evaluate the writer’s style, including their choice of language and other text features.

What readers do

• Focus on selected ideas and information in the text and consider these in relation to their own world view and their purpose for reading.
• Make thoughtful, evidence-based judgments about the selected ideas and information (“What do I think about this? Do I agree, or do I have a different view? What is my view based on?”).
• Consider how these judgments affect their response to the text and whether they need to seek further information or check how others have responded to the same text.

How teachers can support learners

• This information fits with what I already know about … I think that the writer uses it in a very sensible and logical way to support her point of view, for example, …
• Would you please say that again for everyone to hear? That puts the whole question of how the boy shows that he cares about his brother into a new light for me.
• Does the writer convince you that the information he presents is valid? If so, how does he do this?
• Would you want to read another book by this writer? Why? Why not?
• This article put forward an argument for … that I hadn’t heard before. Reading it has led me to change my views in some ways; I used to think that …, but now I believe that …
• If you were the writer, what part of the text would you feel most proud of having written? Why?

Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), andRunning Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000).
Amanda Frater's reflections
I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary.
My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases,identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this.
I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form.
Eric required lots of prompting and careful, directed questions to help him focus his thinking. I was trying to help him identify the best choices and uncover his reasons behind those language choices.
At the beginning we were probably going around in circles a bit so I was reminding him of the word choices he made in the previous lesson, where he had described the sounds and stated that being at his Grandmother's place made him feel safe. However, he was continuing to feed in a whole string of new ideas and he would have kept going. I knew he needed to refocus as he still hadn't really established why his Grandmother's place was special to him. In the previous lesson, he had highlighted the sound of the hail on the roof. I felt it would be helpful for him to imagine himself there, so he could really think about what it was like being inside and hearing the hail on the roof, and be able to express his feelings. That's why I helped him make the connection.
He still wasn't able to express exactly why he felt safe there, nor was he able to articulate the significance of the hail, so I modelled how I thought I would feel inside when it was hailing. He picked up quickly on my thinking aloud and linked the idea of feeling safe to what we had previously constructed as a group and recorded on the chart. Without my realising it, he was trying all the time to link what I was asking him to visualise to what was already described in his writing on the chart. He then described what it could be like if he was outside as a way of providing a reason for his choice of words 'safe and comfortable'.
At the end I asked the whole group to respond as readers to Eric's writing, as making language choices that would give the reader a strong image was our learning intention. In retrospect, it may have been better to focus the question on language choices rather than on generating new ideas, which took Eric onto yet another new idea. However, Thomas' question and the way he picked up on the visual support - adding in 'and comfortable' on the chart would have triggered his thinking -was probably of value too.
Peter Johnson's comments
Teacher:What I want you to do now, Eric, is think about why is this place special to you? How do you feel when you are sitting in the lounge listening to these sounds?
I find that articulating why something is special to me can be a difficult task. I wonder how much access Eric has to why his grandma's house feels special. I wonder whether 'what makes being at your grandma's special to you' might turn Eric's attention to the events and experiences rather than the logic. Once he has assembled these he might be able to show rather than tell why it is special to him.
Turning attention to Eric's feelings and putting him in the situation is a good way to explore the specifics. Amanda says 'these sounds' which indicates there has been more conversation before this about details of his grandma's house.
Eric: I feel, like, happy.
Teacher: Why do you feel happy?
Eric: Um, because, there Im just, like, by myself, with my Grandma. Its like. I get to, like, think what to do, what I can do, like, the next day or something?
I wonder what would happen here if Amanda asked Eric to say more about that.
Teacher: Yesterday, or the day before I remember you saying to me that you felt quite safe. Why do you feel safe?
This positions Eric as an important person. His teacher actually listens to him and remembers what he has to say.
Normally I think 'Why?' is a useful prompt because it helps kids think through the logic of events. I am less sure of its value here because it might be asking the child to unpack something he has no access to, like asking why someone likes chocolate.
Eric: Um, because I go there a lot. I feel better there. I feel comfortable there.
Teacher: Oh, I like that word 'comfortable'. So, Eric, you've told me that when you go to your grandmother's you feel safe and comfortable. I'm going to circle those words. Can you tell the group why you feel safe and comfortable at your grandmother's?
This comment turns the children's attention to words and the idea of savouring them and choosing interesting ones. I am intrigued by the fact that the word 'comfortable' turns up a couple of other times in the transcripts, perhaps because the kids' attention is turned toward that word rather than to words more generally. I wonder how to expand to that larger view of words. Perhaps showing why we like a particular word (images, mouth feel, etc.) and by pointing to words like this often?
The question is useful in that it leaves open the possibility that he says that he can't.
Again, saying why can be difficult to articulate.
Eric: Because I go there a lot and, um, I feel safe there, like, I feel good.
Teacher: OK, can you imagine yourself sitting in your grandmother's house on a day where it's hailing. Does the hail somehow make you feel safe and comfortable?
This directs his attention to imagine himself into the situation. It should be good for getting to specifics.
Just being in his grandma's house makes him feel safe and comfortable. The hail changes the course of this conversation away from Eric's grandma's house and his experience and moves it towards danger and so forth for the next 16 turns.
Eric: Yeah.
Teacher: Why?
Again, 'why do you feel this way?' is often a hard question.
Eric: 'Cause, um, I don't know'.
Teacher: When I'm inside and I can hear the rain or the hail on the roof, it does feel safe because you'll know - you know that you're inside, and you're not outside where you can get really wet, and you're in quite a warm environment.
I think this is a useful way of bringing Amanda's experience alongside Eric's. (I, personally, love this feeling of comfort too -especially the hail or rain on the tin roof.) I think the usefulness is in showing that you have the same sort of feelings but with other situations.
The language shifts from I to you. This should still be an 'I' story so that it doesn't impose it on Eric but simply offers a connection.
Eric: Because if I was outside I might get hurt, because if it drops, like, really hard like, um, as it gets heavier.
Eric has taken on explaining the hail experience rather than his grandmother's place experience.
Teacher: OK.
Eric:It, like, cause it's like ice cubes are kind of big, and they could hit you if they fall from a far, from a high distance, maybe it could hurt you.
Teacher: So you're introducing this idea of danger.
This language keeps the authority with Eric -even though it is not Eric who introduced this idea of danger. Notice how readily he picks up ownership of it in these next lines. The other kids, like Thomas, have bought into it too.
Eric: Yeah!
Teacher: So when you're in your grandmother's house you have that?
Eric: Yeah, so it's safer inside, that's how.
Thomas: And it's not so dangerous.
Teacher: OK.
Eric: Yeah.
Teacher: So, could we say you're away from danger?
Asking permission to use particular words to represent the experience and including it not as Eric's choice but as a group activity -which it is -encourages the group to be included in this decision (though the transcript doesn't show whether this happens). It also keeps the writing choice conditional. It would be good here to offer a choice of words so that they have to make a decision regarding the value of a specific choice.
The choice of 'we' offers support to Eric in making the decision, but also takes some of his authority away. But this may be appropriate in this case since, with the addition of the hail, it is no longer exactly his story.
Eric: Yeah.
Teacher: If I was reading your piece of writing, I'd be wondering, if you said that you were safe and comfortable at your grandmother's house, I'd want to find out why and you just gave me the reason. You said the reason you feel that way is that you're escaping from danger.
The conditional at the beginning is a way to introduce an imaginary reader. It allows overriding the fact that Amanda now knows this stuff and no longer needs it as a reader. However, when possible, I think the personal response  - when I read this, I think - is more powerful because it draws on and builds a relationship of authority.
I'd want to find out- builds the connection between readers - expectations and needs, and writers' choices.
Repeating and attributing ('you said') again builds authority. I suspect, though, that this won't ring fully true for Eric.
Teacher:So, as a group looking at this piece of writing, what other questions do you have for Eric about being at his grandmother's house? Have you got a question, Thomas?
This opening phrase establishes as given that the group has a collective identity and that the group is attending to the piece of writing. It is given and therefore not really able to be contested.
The question invites the group to explore Eric's experience of being at his grandmother's house which is the real topic.
Thomas:Yeah, um, you know how he says that he feels comfortable, and that it's familiar to him? Um, does he often go there cause he wants to be with his Nana, or does he just go there cause he finds it real special?
What an interesting question. Thomas is asking him whether the specialness is about the place or about his grandmother. Notice how he is directing the question not to Eric, but to the teacher who must then give permission to Eric to answer the question. He then responds to Amanda, not Thomas.
Teacher: OK, do you have an answer to that?
Eric: Um, yes, I feel it's to visit my Nana and give her some company, because she lives by herself.
Teacher: OK.
Eric: So, yeah, and it feels - it's special to me going there.
Teacher:OK, so we're starting to find out some more ideas. I might put down that you're giving your grandmother company, because I think that's an important idea. Good question, Thomas.
This does open the possibility of bad questions which will deter some kids from asking them in case they offer a bad one. An alternative would be to explain how the question helped Eric with his writing.

Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), andRunning Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000).
Amanda Frater's reflections:
I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary.
My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases, identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this.
I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge -first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form.
In previous lessons we'd practised composing sentences. However, I noticed that it was still difficult for the students to orally construct a complete sentence when feeding back from their think, pair, share. I then provided support by modelling a way of starting the sentence which was quickly transferred by Jamie into a complete sentence. The sentence built on Eric's vocabulary choices and also reflected the conversation of Eric and Thomas. It was important for all in the group to recognise this.
I wanted Eric to have ownership of the writing. This can be difficult when a group is developing the writing of one student together. That is why I pulled the focus back to Eric as the writer and he did take the ownership back.
Peter Johnson's comments
Teacher: What I want you to do now is, you're going to turn to a partner and you're going to come up with a sentence that will describe how Eric feels at his grandmother's house. OK. You're going to say it out loud and give it back to me and we'll write it as a sentence together. Off you go.
Student discussion
Teacher: What was your sentence, Danica?
Danica: That he feels safe, cause, oh.
Teacher: As a sentence? 'I feel safe' could be one way of starting it.
'Could be' is a way to contribute to a conversation while keeping the topic open. It recognises a possibility as one option rather than as the solution. Of course this depends on the tone of voice and the expected relationships between teacher and students.'Could be' can imply this is an option but not the option I had in mind. This does not seem to be the case here.
Jamie:I feel safe because I'm inside away from danger.
Teacher: What was it? "I feel safe?'
The teacher here is writing down what Jamie is saying, conferring substantial authority.
Jamie: 'because I'm inside away from danger.
Teacher: Let' read that. 'The sound gets louder as the hail gets heavier.' So, already in that first sentence Eric's building up this picture of it getting very, very heavy. 'I feel safe because I'm inside away from danger.' Could we add something else, what other feeling did he have with the word 'safe'?
Eric is established as the author and Amanda is attributing agency to him.
Eric: Um, comfortable?
Eric remembers the specific word, partly, I guess, because the teacher pointed to it at the outset.
Teacher: OK. So where could we put the word 'comfortable' in?
This focuses the choice to be made on one decision in the writing process. The word 'could' invites multiple possibilities - very different from 'should' or 'Where does it go?'
Child: Maybe after -where the other sentence stopped, maybe you could have something similar? So the reader can, like, know what it's, like, what's happening?
Tentativeness markers like 'maybe' mark the suggestion as a draft to be picked up by others. This can be picked up from teacher's language. But note also the uncertainty in the child's voice -the questioning inflection, as if, 'Is that right?'
Eric has made the connection between writers' choices and their consequences for readers.
Teacher: OK, so Eric has decided, and he's the writer, that he wants to add in 'I feel safe and comfortable because I am inside and away from danger'. As readers, what has Eric just done? What do you think, Thomas?
Eric is asserted to be the author, the one making composition decisions. (In his mind, Eric might or might not go along with this.) This is an identity invitation.
Saying 'as readers' provides an invitation to take up the stance of readers responding to the author's choices.
Asking Thomas what he thinks softens the previous sentence a bit, making it not so much a matter of Thomas getting the right answer.
Thomas: Um, cause by putting 'I feel safe and comfortable' like, if, without that, like, if you were reading it and you didn't know that he felt comfortable, it could be, like, he just feels, like, that he's just getting away from the danger and he - you don't really know if he feels comfortable inside. But adding 'comfortable' you know that he actually feels comfortable being inside.
'By putting [X]' he  [accomplishes Y] This is a statement conferring agency upon Eric and the process of authoring.
Teacher: OK, I like your thinking. That was really good. By adding in 'comfortable', not only is he safe in this place, he's really relaxed and he likes to be inside and there is this real feeling of 'I'm at ease being in this place'.
'I like your thinking' focuses attention on the thinking rather than a correct answer.
The response 'that was really good' is unnecessary and runs the risk of undoing the previous sentence with unfocused public praise. It opens the possibility of someone saying something 'really bad.'
Amanda's concluding words offer another potential phrasing and word choice by extending what Thomas says.

Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), and Running Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000).
Amanda Frater's reflections
I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students' participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary.
My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases, identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this.
I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge - first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form.
In one-to-one conversations, it's important to help students feel comfortable to discuss their writing, as their writing is personal to them. This was in my mind as I sat down to work with Eliesa. In working with him, I've found that asking him to read his text aloud helps him hear the language and process the message. Also, he is the writer and this is a way of showing that I value his ownership. I can give immediate and specific feedback on his word choices as a reader, and can deliberately relate what he is doing to the learning intention.
I chose to focus on the interaction around the palace because I wanted Eliesa to see how, with careful selection of a few words, he could make an image stronger for the reader. I suggested that together we needed to work out where to add in the new text as I could see that he was finding it difficult to focus in on one detail. I was signalling, as I often do in such circumstances, that we would solve the problem together and he didn't have to do it alone. On reflection, I think that the difficulty that Eliesa exhibited was due to my asking him for a sentence and then suggesting that he add words 'the king' to an existing sentence. I think this confused him.
I used the language of our learning intention in our conversation. This was important because it helped to focus Eliesa on the purpose for the writing and the expected learning.
Peter Johnston's comments
Teacher: Can you remind me what you're writing about, Eliesa?
Amanda does not immediately ask to see or hear what has been written, which would be attending to the performance rather than to Eliesa and what he has to say. She inquires about what Eliesa is writing about. This opens a conversation that positions Eliesa as a respected person with interesting things to say. It also makes it possible for Eliesa to hear himself tell another draft of what he is writing. The contrast between what he now says and what he has written opens a space for him to revise without teacher direction - leaving him in control of the composition. 'Remind me' is different from 'Tell me' because it recognises that Amanda has encountered Eliesa's piece before and it is her frailty that makes her not fully remember it rather than her not attending to Eliesa's important composition.
Amanda consistently speaks to individual children using their first names. This does invite the feeling that they are someone, recognised and respected. It seems trivial but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Rereading the conversation without these names has a very different feel.
Eliesa: Um, my special place was, um, my Dad's van.
Teacher: OK, and what makes it special to you?
I wonder whether asking a more open question might get more detail and then this more focused question would be able to capitalise on the detail. Suppose the prompt were simply 'Tell me about it.'
Eliesa: Um, because, it's away from my brothers and my sister like arguing, like, singing songs that are out of tune, and my parents asking for, like, make them cup of teas and also cleaning up.
Teacher: OK, so it's a place you can go and escape to.
Offering a possible summarising statement. It is offered in a way that shows Amanda is attending closely to what Eliesa is saying. Eliesa shows that he takes it this way in his validating 'Yeah.'
Eliesa: Yeah.
Teacher: So, when you're in that place, does anybody know that you're there?
This is a question of genuine interest, which extends their relationship of respect.
Eliesa: Um, no, only my cat.
Teacher: So you're only there with your cat.
And again.
Eliesa: Yeah.
Teacher: OK. Did you start writing about how it felt to be in this place?
Turning attention now to where Eliesa is in the process of recording his experience so he can talk about the writing itself.
Eliesa: Yeah.
Teacher: Do you want to read that to me? I think it was down here somewhere, wasn't it?
This indirect request is intended to soften the direction. This doesn't work for all cultural groups. Some hear this literally.
The second question shows familiarity with his piece and shows that she pays attention to what he does, so he has to, too.
Eliesa: (reads) 'I like it because it's comfortable, peaceful, and nobody can know me. It just feels like I'm in a small palace.'
Teacher: OK. Why did you choose to say that it was like being in a small palace? What did you want the reader to know from that?
'Choose to,' emphasises the authorial agency.
The next question further emphasises the agency by focusing on the expected consequences of the author's action.
Eliesa: Oh, like, like it's just me and, like, it feels like that I just want, like a small kingdom, and,  when you're, like, king, you have your palace and it's just you living in there.
Teacher: Oh, so you're this king inside the van!
This is a reflective restatement that extends Eliesa's palace metaphor, at once offering new language possibilities and building respect by showing close attention to what Eliesa has to say.
Eliesa: Yeah.
Teacher: So, as a reader I want to hear about you being this king, OK, because that's such a great image for me and I can start to understand why that place would be very special to you. So, together we need to work out a way of being able to add that, um, image into your writing. Where do you think that would fit?
The first sentence turns attention back to the writing by identifying herself as a reader. Amanda shows interest in Eliesa's pursuing her extension of his metaphor and shows a connection between her interest as a reader and Eliesa's choice of words. This sentence also brings the connection back to the topic -the purpose of the piece.
The words 'together we' insist on a collaborative view of the writing. They offer support -'you're not alone in this' - but at the cost of individual agency. Adding the image to Eliesa's writing takes for granted that Eliesa does want to add this to his writing. It does not offer him a choice.
The last sentence offers him a choice, but not to leave it out.
Eliesa: Um, after the palace and just tell them why I feel like being in a palace?
Teacher: OK. Can you think of a sentence now that would back that idea up?
This keeps the momentum going, not allowing the opportunity to not include it.
Eliesa: Like, um because...
Teacher: I think down here, 'It just feels like I'm in a small palace'.'It just -you could add something in here about being the king. What do you think?... Could I give you a suggestion? It just feels like I'm a king. Have a go at adding that in.
This section is very forceful. Following the invitations to think of a sentence and where to put it Eliesa has no time to do so, no opportunity to reject the idea. Although Amanda asks permission, to make a suggestion -both important politeness conventions to maintain Eliesa's authority- however, there is the insistence that he write the suggestion.
Eliesa: (writes, then reads) - ' a very small palace.'
Teacher: OK, so to your sentence we added, 'It just feels like I'm a king'. Why do you think it was important for the reader that you added in the words of 'the king?'
This divides up authorship. The first piece is Eliesa's, the second piece is composed by Amanda and Eliesa.
The question asserts that it was important for the reader to know that Eliesa feels like a king. It does not allow Eliesa to contest the presumed importance because it is given information. The only part in question is why it is important.
Eliesa: Because I feel like a king, and probably in palaces you mostly have a king in them.
The 'probably' and 'mostly' suggest some caution on Eliesa's part.
Teacher: OK, so you want your reader to know that you're the ruler of this van?
This is an assertion by Amanda of Eliesa's goals. He may not agree, in which case it would undermine his ownership of the writing.
Eliesa: Yeah!
Teacher: OK. And I can see that now as the reader. That's made the image a lot stronger for me.
Builds a strong connection between reader and writing strategy, emphasising what happens in readers' heads.
Eliesa: Yeah.
Teacher: That's a cool piece of writing.
This is a 'close the conversation' statement. It is unspecific praise, which can have a down-side. Since it doesn't show what is cool about the piece of writing, it doesn't allow the author to later view his work through specific qualities himself. He has to go back to the teacher to see if this new piece is cool, too.

Students should be grouped for writing instruction, although writing groups are generally more flexible than guided reading groups. Grouping for writing, like grouping for reading, is always based on the students’ identified learning needs.

Writing groups include groups formed on a short-term basis and longer term groups. A short-term writing group is formed because certain students share a particular strength or need; the teacher may have identified this while monitoring the students’ writing. The teacher draws a group of students together, shares the learning goal with them, and works closely with them to enable them to meet that goal. The composition of such writing groups is based on the teacher’s identification of a particular strength or need.

Longer term writing groups are instructional groups that the teacher forms on the basis of student writing samples that have been gathered and analysed. The students are grouped according to shared strengths, needs, and next steps identified from the samples, and a set of writing goals is established for each group. The teacher works, over time, with each group in shared and guided writing sessions and in group conferences about writing. As a general guide, there should be no more than four longer term writing groups in a class and a maximum of eight students in each group. Since students progress at different rates, the make-up of the writing groups will change as the students’ competencies change.

Teachers may not schedule these groups for regular writing instruction in the way that reading instruction groups are scheduled. However, it is important for teachers to ensure that they spend instructional time with each group and with each student on a regular basis.

Shared writing involves the teacher and a group of students – often the whole class – in working together to plan and construct a text (or part of one). The teacher demonstrates and talks through the process of constructing the text, giving explicit instruction in how to use relevant writing strategies effectively. The students contribute their ideas and expertise as the text is constructed. Most shared writing sessions last for between ten and twenty minutes. Just as in shared reading, sitting together as a group develops a sense of community and enables the students to discuss the text in a collaborative way.

In a shared writing session, the teacher selects and uses a range of instructional strategies. For example, the teacher might model and explain how to link and sequence words and phrases into simple, compound, or complex sentences. Or the teacher might prompt the students in order to reinforce their awareness of the features of a particular text form.

The shared writing approach enables teachers to help students develop more complex ideas and language and to foster their critical awareness as writers. It provides an excellent setting for introducing or reinforcing information about specific text forms, including the transactional text forms that students will increasingly encounter in social studies, science, mathematics, and other curriculum areas.

Shared writing enables the group to make connections with their reading. During shared writing, students can develop a writer’s perspective on their instructional reading texts. Learning how these text forms are constructed helps the students to read them more effectively. Sometimes shared writing draws directly on shared reading, for example, when the group prepares for writing by deconstructing an existing text, searching together for the writing features and literary devices that the writer has employed to create the text.

Shared writing can be very motivating for students as developing writers. When it is an enjoyable, creative, and empowering activity, students develop and reinforce positive attitudes towards writing.

Introducing the session

In every shared writing session, the student writers have a specific purpose for writing and also a learning goal. The teacher shares the purpose for writing, for example, “to persuade readers to adopt your point of view”. This writing purpose is reflected in the set task or tasks for the session, for example, “to write a letter in order to persuade the recipient to adopt your point of view”. The teacher also shares the learning goal with the students, that is, they tell the students what they will be learning about writing during the session. For example, “We are learning how to state a personal position and support it with evidence.”

Both the purpose for writing and the learning goal are based on the needs of the students in the group, as identified from analysed writing data (for example, analysis of texts in the students’ draft writing books). It is important that the students have a clear understanding of both their writing purpose and their learning goal.

Teachers often lead students into shared writing through a collaborative discussion about what they could write together to meet their purpose. This talk may determine the content of the writing. Shared writing discussions can involve, for example, discussing current themes in cross-curricular work, talking about the content of a graphic organiser that they have filled in during shared or guided reading, or recalling and discussing personal stories.

During the session

During a shared writing session, the teacher acts as scribe, writing on a chart or board that all the students can see easily. Generally, the students contribute most of the text, often in response to the teacher’s questions and prompts, but sometimes the teacher writes parts of the text in front of the students, with just occasional contributions from them. As the text is recorded, it is constantly reread and amended as teacher and students work towards communicating their ideas more and more accurately and effectively. By promoting continual revision of the draft text, the teacher reinforces the importance of ongoing editing, especially to strengthen the deeper features of the text. Students should be encouraged to reread the draft text through the eyes of its intended audience.

It is important to encourage and value contributions from all students in conversations during shared writing. The teacher may sometimes need to elicit a response from a shy or new student. Effective teachers build and maintain a momentum so that all their students are motivated and engaged in the activity. “Think, pair, share” is a good strategy for engaging all students in shared writing conversations.

Concluding the session

Towards the end of the session, the students proofread the draft text. This gives the message that skilled writers attend to the surface features as well as the deeper features of writing before publishing a text.

The students also analyse the completed text, for example, by comparing it to an existing text that they have deconstructed. A range of teacher questions and prompts can help them to ascertain how far the text meets its purpose and how far the students have met their learning goal.

The conversations that take place during this analysis enable new writing purposes and learning goals to be identified. Sometimes the teacher sets a writing purpose for the group; sometimes the students suggest or identify their own writing purpose, based on what they know about their own learning needs and goals. Effective teachers generally involve the students in helping to plan the criteria that will show they have met their learning or writing purpose.

These conversations also build the students’ awareness and understanding of quality writing, especially when teachers ask strategic questions such as “What makes this writing have this impact on you as a reader? How can we make our writing as effective as this?” Thinking about these questions contributes to students’ metacognitive awareness.

Over a series of shared writing sessions, all of the processes used in writing a text can be demonstrated and discussed – forming intentions, crafting, recrafting, and sometimes presenting to an audience. Often, the product of shared writing is intended to meet an immediate learning need, and the group may focus on only one part of one process during each session. The same learning goal or writing purpose can be explored over several sessions.

After a successful shared writing session, many students are ready to write independently. The shared writing session will have clarified for them the purpose for writing, the writing strategies and skills they need to employ, and the features of a text that meets the purpose (that is, what success looks like). They will also be clear about their learning goal and how they will know that they are learning what they planned to learn. Some students, including many new learners of English, may need additional directed instruction through guided writing.

Using shared writing to help students who are experiencing difficulties

Shared writing is an effective way to support students who are experiencing difficulties in writing, including those who lack confidence or motivation. It is also an effective way of helping students who are learning to write in English as a new language. Within the supportive environment of the shared writing session, they can see the text growing slowly and purposefully as the teacher scribes, and they can be encouraged to contribute ideas. Words, phrases, and sentences are repeated and revised, enabling the students to build on their existing vocabulary and language skills.

Guided writing is an opportunity for the teacher to work intensively with a small group of students who share similar learning needs. Guided writing often follows shared writing. The guided writing group may be a longer term group, or it may be an occasional group formed for a specific instructional objective. The teacher knows what the students have already learned, what their needs and interests are, and what their next learning step will be. The next learning step is explicit in the learning goal for the writing activity. The writing activity generally involves working on a model developed during shared writing

The students, sitting with the teacher, construct their texts individually in their own draft books. The teacher supports them closely in finding the best way to meet their learning goal. For example, if the goal were “to use tense consistently in sentences”, the teacher and students might initially decide on the general thrust of some sentences that require manipulation of tense. All the students would write their sentences individually in their draft books and then share them with the teacher and with each other. Such sharing helps students to discover how well they are meeting the purpose. The students learn from one another as well as from the teacher, seeking, offering, and responding to feedback as they think, talk, and write their way through the task. The teacher is able to monitor the progress of every student.

Although this approach to writing is most often employed with students who need extra support, it is equally useful for extending high achievers and, indeed, all students. For example, if the purpose were “to use the passive voice effectively”, the students might work first as a group, with the teacher, and then individually to change instances of the active voice to the passive voice in an existing explanation text. The teacher might model the process and then direct the students to make further changes independently. The group might go on to talk about the changes they have made individually and the difference that their changes have made to the tone of the text.

Guided writing provides students with additional scaffolding so that they can achieve their writing purpose and learning goal more effectively. It should not simply repeat hat has been taught in a shared writing session.

Independent writing means students writing by themselves with varying levels of support from the teacher. In most independent writing situations, the student will write for a specific purpose with a clear understanding of what achieving this purpose will “look like”. Teachers provide a good model when they share their own writing and are as honest and specific in their writing as they expect their students to be.

Often the independent writing task is generated through shared writing. After the shared writing session, many students are ready to write independently using the writing strategy or skill they have learned with the group. Some students, however, need the additional scaffolding and support that guided writing gives them before they begin to write independently.

As well as completing teacher-directed writing tasks, students need time to write for their own purposes. They need opportunities to write simply and honestly about their own experiences and things that matter to them and to share their writing. Self-selected writing tasks enable students to explore ideas that interest them and to practise, at their own pace, what they have learned during shared and guided writing.

As the students write, the teacher talks with individuals, giving feedback about their writing as appropriate. It’s important to be ready to support students when necessary but not to intervene in a way that interrupts the writer’s train of thought or reduces their sense of owning their own writing. Writing should always be an enjoyable activity. Students should look forward to sharing work with a teacher who helps them to reflect on what they have written and to consider how the reader will feel when reading it.

Students should be encouraged to share their writing with a buddy, a group, or the class. They may choose to share their work at the draft, revised, or published stage. Sometimes they will display published work in the classroom or at another school or community venue. Effective teachers model collaborative ways of talking about writing so that their students are supported in sharing their work and can help one another to clarify their meaning and extend their thinking. When everyone is involved in helping to extend a piece of writing in a supportive and creative classroom climate, all the students benefit.

Sharing work also creates an opportunity to celebrate students’ writing achievements. Making meaning of, thinking critically about, and enjoying their own texts and one another’s is rewarding and helps to establish a community of writers.

Shared writing involves the teacher and a group of students – often the whole class – in planning and constructing a text together. The teacher models and talks through the process of constructing a text (or part of one), giving explicit instruction in how to use writing strategies during the shared writing process. The students contribute their ideas and expertise to the process of constructing the text. (This is often followed by guided writing; when the teacher has constructed part of a text, the students continue writing their own texts, working with teacher support but as individual writers.) Through shared writing, students can take part in constructing a more complex text than they would be able to write on their own.

Modelling can be used as an instructional strategy to show students, step by step, the planning, shaping, and structuring of a text for a specific purpose. The teacher may model the use of a “mind map” or “web” to show how a writer assembles ideas and then sorts them to be ready for writing. Carefully planned questions can help the students to think about how a particular text might be organised. The teacher may prompt by showing them similar familiar material or by reviewing with them the features of a particular type of text.

This approach enables the teacher to expose students to new, rich language, adding to the range of vocabulary and language structures that they can use in their personal writing. Shared writing reinforces positive attitudes towards writing by making it an enjoyable and creative activity.

The shared writing approach is not just for beginners. In years 3 and 4 and beyond, teachers can help their students to develop more complex ideas and language and can foster their critical awareness as writers. Shared writing provides an excellent context for introducing or reinforcing information about the features of texts, including the features of the kinds of non-fiction texts that students will later encounter in science, mathematics, and other curriculum areas.

The teacher begins by sharing the purpose for the shared writing session with the students. During the session, the teacher acts as scribe, writing on a chart or whiteboard in front of the students and showing them how to construct a coherent and enjoyable text. Over a series of shared writing sessions, the whole process of writing a text may be modelled – forming intentions, composing, revising, and publishing for an audience (see pages 138–141). Generally, however, the product of shared writing is intended to meet an immediate purpose, so the group will focus on only one part of the process.

Topics for shared writing can arise from many sources, including:

• current events and situations in the students’ lives 
• current themes in cross-curricular work 
• readings that the students have shared 
• artefacts or objects that the students have handled and discussed 
• discoveries in the natural environment 
• hobbies or school activities that the students take part in 
• images from wordless picture books, photo sequences, or paintings.

Shared writing provides a supportive instructional setting in which (depending on their students’ learning needs) teachers can:

• model the process of writing 
• explain and model the use of the conventions of written text 
• explicitly teach writing strategies 
• analyse how words are constructed 
• focus on letters, words, and letter-sound relationships 
• explore letter clusters, words within words, and patterns of spelling 
• model strategies for checking and improving spelling, syntax, and punctuation 
• model strategies for rereading and revising texts 
• develop students’ vocabulary and their knowledge of syntax and idiom 
• show students how to choose language to convey emotion or to persuade an audience 
• demonstrate the use of a range of forms and structures in written language 
• develop students’ sense of an author’s purpose and of the different audiences for different types of text.

During shared writing, as the teacher prompts, gives feedback, explains, and questions, valuable conversations arise between the teacher and students and also among students. In order to encourage the ideas and contributions of all the students, the teacher may sometimes need to elicit a response from the shy or new child. Effective teachers build and maintain a momentum so that all students are motivated and engaged in the activity.

A great deal of implicit learning occurs in shared writing, just as it does in language experience activities. The students listen actively and also participate as the teacher makes links to what they have recently read, heard, or written.

Teachers can introduce students to many forms of text during shared writing – reports, recounts, instructions, explanations, descriptions, narratives, charts, labels, speech balloons, wall stories, captions for photographs, diaries, shopping lists, recipes, dialogue, poetry, and more. Familiar texts can also provide starting points for shared writing. The teacher and students can innovate on a story, a poem, or even a particular sentence that they enjoyed, patterning a new idea on its style and structure. This can lead to conversations that build the students’ awareness, especially when teachers model strategic questions like: “What makes this good writing?” “How can we make our writing like this?”

The teacher uses shared writing to develop the students’ understanding of how different kinds of writing meet different purposes. By making links with the students’ reading, teachers can elicit or explain the reasons why, for example, lists, reports, instructions, and letters are presented differently. The teacher helps the students to make the connections and to transfer the learning to their reading or future writing (see also chapter 5).

Using shared writing to meet diverse needs

Shared writing is an effective way of supporting NESB students. They can see the text growing slowly and carefully as the teacher scribes, and they can be encouraged, in this supportive environment, to contribute ideas. Words and phrases are repeated and revised, enabling all the students to build on their existing vocabulary and language skills. This is also very valuable for students who are experiencing difficulties in writing, including those who lack confidence or motivation.

Shared writing enables teachers to build the learning of those whose home literacy practices differ from those of the school, to incorporate these students’ expertise, and to help them learn about classroom literacy activities. In shared writing, topics can be chosen to reflect the students’ diverse experiences and backgrounds.

In “interactive writing”, a variation of shared writing, all the children are involved in scribing the common text. Each child needs a marker or pencil and a small whiteboard or clipboard. The teacher leads the writing, but all the children write down the text themselves, sometimes copying and sometimes writing known letters and words themselves.

Interactive writing is most effective with a small group. It provides a safe and supportive environment for reluctant writers, for NESB students (students from non-English-speaking backgrounds), and for any students who need to give intensive attention to features of the English language.

By involving their students in this way as “apprentices”, the teacher can make explicit the various conventions of print (such as spacing, punctuation, and directionality) as well as helping the children to express meaning and think about what is being written. As the children become more confident and fluent, they will move from interactive writing, where they are fully supported, to guided writing.

In guided writing, as in guided reading, the student progressively takes control of the writing process. The teacher usually works with a group on a focused task. The teacher knows what the students have already learned, what their needs and interests are, and what their next learning steps will be. These steps are generally identified as the learning goals for a writing task that follows on from a model provided during shared writing. The students construct their texts individually, working with the ideas about writing already developed with the teacher. The teacher supports them in working out how best to convey their message to the intended audience.

During guided writing sessions, students can practise any or all of the steps in the writing process (as set out on pages 138–141). The students learn from each other as well as from the teacher, seeking and responding to feedback as they each think and talk their way through the task.

The teacher’s instructional objective may be to:

• teach a writing skill, for example, how to write dialogue using correct punctuation 
• focus the students’ attention on a specific strategy for writing, such as using mind maps to plan a text 
• provide a framework within which individual students can develop their personal voice 
• build the students’ vocabulary knowledge by using new language and clarifying it in initial discussion 
• encourage the students to choose words carefully, thinking about their likely effect on the intended audience 
• teach the students about the characteristics of different text forms 
• build in the students a sense of being one of a community of writers.

As well as working on teacher-directed writing tasks, students need time to write for their own purposes while engaging with topics that are significant to them.

Independent writing gives students opportunities to explore ideas that interest them and to practise what they have learned during shared and guided writing. Students need opportunities to write simply and honestly about their own experiences and things that matter a lot to them and to share their writing. Teachers provide a good model when they share their own writing and are as honest and specific in their writing as they expect their students to be.

When the students are writing on their own, the teacher can observe their writing and note their progress. Teachers should be ready to support or guide when necessary, but they need to be sensitive about intervening in a way that might interrupt a writer’s train of thought or reduce their sense of ownership of their writing. Writing should always be an enjoyable activity. Students should look forward to sharing their writing with a teacher who helps them to reflect critically on what they have written and to consider how the reader will feel when reading it.

Students should always have the opportunity to share their finished writing with a group or class and to see their work displayed. The teacher models collaborative ways of talking about writing so that the students are supported in sharing their work and can help one another to extend their thinking and clarify their meaning. When everyone is involved in helping to extend a piece of writing in a supportive and creative classroom climate, all the students benefit.

Language experience activities are a way of motivating learners that can lead into meaningful writing (including shared or guided writing). Language experience activities involve planned, purposeful “doing and talking” together, which will be followed by writing and reading about the experience. Such activities help young learners to make sense of their world by taking part in, sharing, and discussing authentic experiences and (usually) going on to contribute to or construct a written text about them.

The teacher engages the students in the experience and in discussion that elicits the students’ own language about the experience, some of which is generally recorded on a whiteboard. The teacher may go on to use shared or guided writing to produce the text or texts about the experience. The key feature of this approach is that it uses talk about children’s experiences as the basis for writing.

A great deal of implicit learning occurs during language experience activities. Many messages are conveyed about the nature of writing, how print works, and the conventions of various forms of written language.

Language experience activities make visible the links between spoken and written language. A lot of talk takes place, and the children become aware that writing arises from oral language. As the children enjoy reading and rereading the texts that they have created, they build their awareness of the relationship between reading and writing.

Language experience activities also provide opportunities for teachers to meet instructional objectives in particular subject areas and to develop literacy learning across the curriculum.

Teachers plan interesting, enjoyable language experiences with an instructional purpose in mind. These experiences help children to think about what they would like to write. For example, the teacher may use:

• special events within the school, such as a fair, a sports day, or a visit 
• special events beyond the school, such as a celebration or another local or national occasion 
• a practical activity, such as cooking or painting.

Language experience activities allow the teacher and children to develop a shared language as together they use the language orally and discuss how to transform it into writing. The teacher models writing down some of the key words and phrases that arise in the discussion.

During discussion, meanings are clarified, and so the conversation can be extended. The students’ ideas are explored, and their words are recorded, by the teacher in shared writing or by the student in guided writing.

Such writing is deeply personal because it reflects the children’s voices directly. The teacher has a strategic role in ensuring that each child has ownership of what is written. One reason why language experience activities are so effective with new learners of English and students from diverse cultural backgrounds is that the experience can capture and affirm what is of personal value to each student.

Learner writers may express their ideas first in drawing. Teachers can gain a lot of information from their students’ drawings, for example, by observing the subject matter they choose and the details they include.