Unit 5 - Promoting writing in the Primary Grades - Approaches and activities- by Chinyere Hughes

Unit 5 - Promoting writing in the Primary Grades - Approaches and activities

Initially, I was in 'awe' and could not believe that I was completely unaware of these facets of writing... I obviously took them for granted  because although I was able to identify what each were after collectively identifying them as a class, they seemed to have merely 'existed' when I did them.
Most importantly though, I was pleased to learn of so many activities that I can use to effectively teach each approach / aspect.

We identified the six genres of the writing:

• Storytelling, Informal (expository), descriptive, poetry, letter-writing and journal writing

Some of the purposes that we identified were to inform, entertain, relate incidents, clarify facts, document/make notes/records-keeping, describe.  These purposes are core, because they establish the approach that must be taken so as to meet the expectation of the reader.
For example, to relate feelings, ideas or entertain, the Poetry approach is effective and this can be done via music, rhyming, free-writing, Creative Corner. Or, to relate an incident, entertain, evoke imaginative / creative skills, Storytelling is effective and some appropriate activities are Author's Chair, Digital Storytelling and Tell It Your Way.  These activities are interactive, and would therefore enrich the students learning experience and enable effective and meaningful teaching to occur.

Also, I realized that even the genre of Letter Writing can be taught and learn in a fun and effective way incorporating technology (word processing) and having writing workshops and modelling the different types.  An nice activity hat can be used is that of Fill Me In, where students with help from the teacher completes an empty letter template by filling in all the missing parts or using representations such as the human body (heading, body, then the feet as closing).