Creating texts: word and sentence level

A Quaker Share (Dawson 2009) is used to support students to share their own writing in a group, to build confidence about reading aloud, and to provide them with opportunities to explore the impact of their writing on others.

A traditional Quaker Share is loosely structured in the following ways:

• Students read aloud a few of their sentences to the group.
• The reading moves around the group, but no comments are made about what is read.
• Students can be encouraged to record things they hear that they find enjoyable or particularly interesting.
• Once each member of the group has shared some of their writing, they discuss how it felt to read to a group who is quiet and listens.

This activity can be adapted and focused in in many ways, depending upon the context of the group and purpose of learning. Always consider the ways that you may employ this strategy so that your students feel comfortable to share their writing. The teacher may decide that on the first occasion students share with a small group but then progress to a larger group as confidence is developed.

In the context of narrative writing, the teacher might ask for students to share a paragraph that includes 2-3 sentences that use expanded noun groups well (for example, ‘a kind-hearted soul in the shape of a lonely old man leaning on the window’) or employs particular types of figurative language such as metaphor or simile (for example, ‘like a hungry lion grabbing free meat’).

Students can be led in a sharing time once the reading has completed, where they reflect on their experiences reading their work aloud, and experiences of listening to others. What did they learn about language and their own writing through this process?

Supports and scaffolds can be adjusted for differing student abilities and confidence, particularly for students for whom English is an additional language/dialect.

If the activity is done regularly through writing units, students can build up reflections on the writing process in a writing journal.

Hattie and Timperley (2007) remind us of the vital role of feedback on student learning.

Building on the Quaker Share strategies, Celebrating Sentences is designed to:

• support the sharing of writing at the level of sentences in the classroom
• to draw attention to the way language creates meaning and effect
• to encourage students to feel empowered as writers.

This strategy is used when students are peer conferencing a piece of writing, such as an argumentative text.

They are asked to highlight two to three sentences in the paragraph, or paragraphs they are reading that they find convincing. Both students (writer and reader) are then tasked with identifying what makes these sentences convincing, and then applying this learning to another part of the text.

For example, the following sentence from a Year 8 persuasive essay on compulsory sport might be highlighted by the student writer’s peer:

Secondly, compulsory sport is a negative experience for students who are not good at sport. Some students feel embarrassed, degraded, and belittled about their skill levels and might be bullied by their team mates because they aren’t very good at sport.

16% of students in America are overweight, they need to do some activity but compulsory sport is not the solution. A school psychologist called Emma says that for some students, sport is an ‘uncomfortable experience’. If students feel bad about themselves then they might quit sport as adults which will be bad for their health. This means that compulsory sport can have a bad impact on students’ wellbeing.

The questions students might ask each other are:

• Which words have an impact on the reader? They might notice the sensing verb ‘feel’ and evaluative adjectives embarrassed, degraded, and belittled which present negative feelings.
• What might this mean for other sentences that are not as persuasive? They might notice will be bad and might be bullied to consider more effective use of modal verbs and intensifying or modal adverbs (for example, possibly, probably, certainly, definitely) to suggest the degree of likelihood or probability of the occurrence of feelings. The table below assists student to build verb groups in this and other activities.

Students can write the sentences they are celebrating on a shared digital space (such as a word document or padlet.com). The teacher can then lead a discussion of the characteristics of the celebratory sentences. This can provide opportunities for the class to see and understand what makes successful writing in the particular genre being studied, such as the examples detailed below that explore the use of modality in persuasive texts.

Discussion of the example sentences could include discussion points such as the following:

• Modal verbs of different strength such as might, will, must can modulate the writer’s stance or position.
• Modal adverbs or intensifiers of different strength such as possibly, probably, certainly can also modulate the writer’s stance or position.
• More precise language choices such as ‘experience’ instead of ‘feel’, ‘discomfort’ or ‘embarrassment’ instead of ‘bad’ suggest a stronger sense of negative attitudes or feelings.
• Including a noun group such as ‘a significant impact on student confidence’ is more ‘written like’ or academic language and provides a sense of the author’s authority or expertise on the topic.

A word cline is an effective strategy that helps students to reinforce their understanding of the meaning of words and to extend their vocabularies. The word cline comes from the Greek word clino – to slope.

A word cline, therefore, is a graded sequence of words whose meanings are arranged in a continuum that is usually shown on a sloping line. The purpose of the activity is to have students discuss and explore the subtle shifts in meaning that occur when language is arranged in a graduated manner. This strategy can be used in all forms of writing, including, narratives, imaginative and persuasive texts.

Word cline for the adjective ‘hot’

Word cline for the verb ‘states’

At the Year 7 level, word clines help students investigate how language works and prepare students for their own writing (VCELA371, VCELY387).

Word clines for verbs are helpful scaffolds that assist students’ discussion of word choices and shades of meaning, setting them up well for textual analysis in the later secondary years (VCELA474).

A useful way for students to learn to build sentence starters into their own work is to provide them with a list of words that relate specifically to the text type or genre they are creating.

The most appropriate text connectives to use are the ones that fit the purpose of the writing. For example, the text connectives in a narrative indication time are used to sequence events chronologically, often at the beginning of the sentence. For example, after that, after a while, then.

In an exposition, a range of text connectives might be used for different purposes. For example:

• additive, also, moreover; causative
• as a result, consequently, conditional/concessional
• otherwise, in that case, however, sequential
• to begin with, in conclusion; clarifying
• for instance, in fact, in addition.

   

For the purposes of this activity, focus on the text connectives that can be used at the beginning of sentences.

(Adapted from Derewianka, Beverly. (2011) A New Grammar Companion for Teachers. NSW, PETA.)

In addition to highlighting text connectives, students can be taught about the ways in which dependent clauses and prepositional phrases are used at the beginning of sentences to create particular narrative effect.

For example, after a second of wondering, they ran through the door… In the enchanted forest on a magical land far, far away, three pixies were sleeping under a tree …In an exposition, passive voice might be used to foreground the object e.g. When the rainforests are burnt to make way for palm oil plantations, the orangutans’ habitat is destroyed.

Curriculum link for the above example: VCELA414.

Phonological knowledge refers to knowledge about the sounds in language. It is an important part of learning to write (and read). As part of learning to spell, students need to develop phonological awareness, that is, the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate syllables, rhymes and individual sounds (phonemes) in increasingly complex words (VCELA475).

One way to improve spelling is through segmenting activities. Segmenting is the ability to split words into their separate speech sounds. Segmenting advances in complexity, from:

• sentence segmentation
• to syllable segmenting and blending
• to blending and segmenting individual sounds (phonemes).

It cannot be assumed that all students in the secondary years have successfully developed phonological knowledge, and secondary English teachers may find it useful to introduce sentence segmenting activities (below) before moving onto to more complex segmenting approaches.

Segmenting at the word level begins with an emphasis on syllables. Teachers should begin with one and two syllable words, asking students to sound-out aloud each syllable in a word (as in ‘to-pic’, ‘no-vel’, ‘po-em’). Students can be encouraged to clap as they complete this activity which will allow them to make stronger connections between individual sounds and syllables. Progression can be made by adding two-three syllable words, and so on.

For some students in secondary school, there might be a need to identify individual sounds (phonemes) in words and to provide support in blending sounds or using onset-rime activities to decode words.

Onset-rime activities involve breaking words into their onsets (consonants before the consonants), and the rime (everything left in the word).

For example, the rime "own" as in "down" could have different onsets to make words such as:

• fr-own
• t-own
• cl-own.

This use of segmenting, from the sentence to syllable to phoneme, will help develop phonological awareness and an understanding of the relationship between sounds and the alphabetic symbols that represent them in writing (phonics).

Visual, or orthographic, knowledge is the awareness of the symbols (letters or groups of letters) used to represent the individual sounds of spoken language in written form. To spell fluently, students also need to know about how written letters are arranged in English (VCELA384).

Two visual strategies which represent variations of Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check, have been devised by Westwood (1994) and develop visual knowledge. They are:

Variation 1:

• Look at the word.
• Say – make sure you know how to pronounce the word.
• Break the word into syllables.
• Write the word without copying.
• Check what you have written.
• Revise.

Variation 2:

• Select a difficult word.
• Pronounce the word slowly and clearly.
• Say each syllable of the word.
• Name the letters in the word.
• Write the word, naming each letter as you write.

These visual strategies can help students remember specific written words and word parts.

Morphemes represent the smallest meaningful units of language. Morphemes come in two forms.

Free morphemes that can stand alone with a specific meaning. For example, Catch, Cook, or Strong.

Bound morphemes cannot stand on their own and can only appear as part of another word. Prefixes and suffixes are examples of bound morphemes. Prefixes are bolted on to the front of a word to add specific meaning.

Prefixes can give a sense of order in time. For example, the prefix [fore-] in the words

• foresee
• foretell
• forewarn.

Fore- indicates a sense of something happening before the action described in the base word. To foresee is to see something before it happens.

Other English prefixes like [dis-] [de-] [mis-] and [un-] signal the opposite meaning to the word it is attached to (Hamawand, 2011). 

We can see negative prefixes in words like:

• destabilise
• deconstruct
• dissimilar
• displease
• uncertain
• unrest
• misinterpret
• misshapen.

English spelling rule for adding prefixes

When you add a prefix to a base or root word, you can always just bolt it straight on. No need to change the spelling of the word it attaches to.

Dis + similar = dissimilar mis + shapen = misshapen un + necessary = unnecessary

Suffixes carry meaning and are bolted on to the end of a word where the combination of the base and the suffix forms a new word.

Suffixes also play an important role in the nominalisation of English words. Nominalisation refers to the process of turning a verb into a noun form.

Example, ‘Consideration of this issue is vital’ instead of ‘You should consider this issue’.

Nominal suffixes are attached to the end of verbs or adjectives to form nouns.

For example, we can form nouns when we add the suffixes:

• [-al]
• [-ce]
• [-ion]
• [-ment].

We can see how verbs are nominalised by adding a nominal suffix in these word sums:

• celebrate + ion = celebration
• modulate + ion = modulation
• enjoy + ment = enjoyment.

We can see how adjectives are nominalised by adding a nominal suffix in these word sums:

• aware + ness = awareness
• appear + ance = appearance.

English spelling rule for adding suffixes

When you add a suffix to a word, you need to change the spelling if the word it attaches to ends in a vowel letter and the suffix also begins with a vowel letter.

For example, the verb ‘regulate’ can be nominalised by adding the suffix [-ion]. The spelling rule for adding suffixes determines that the final letter ‘e’ must be dropped before adding ‘ion’ as it begins with a vowel letter (a, e, I, o, u or y).

If the suffix begins with a consonant letter as in [-ment] or [-ness], you can always just bolt these suffixes onto the base word. For example, the verb ‘amaze’ can be nominalised by adding the suffix [-ment]. The spelling rule for adding suffixes determines it is bolted on to the base without dropping the final ‘e’, so we have ‘amazement’.

Working with morphemes teaches students to ‘look inside’ the word to find meaningful parts within the whole word (VCELA354). Working with students to group words that share common morphemes is an effective strategy for developing their morphological understandings (Herrington & Macken-Horarik, 2015).

Grouping common morphemes together provides an opportunity for students to make meaningful connections or links between words despite changes in sounds. For example, Herrington and Macken-Horarik explain how a grouping activity allowed the following words to be grouped:

• native
• nature
• natural
• nationwide
• nationality
• national
• naturalistic
• naturally.

All words shared the common root morpheme [nat-] (meaning source, birth or tribe) even though the [nat-] morpheme is spoken differently. For example, the morpheme [nat-] in ‘natural’ is spoken with a short vowel sound, and in the word ‘native’ it is spoken with a long /a/ sound.

This activity can also be conducted in reverse, with the teacher placing a target word on the whiteboard, for example, the word, remember, and asking students to identify the various morphemes.

Once the morpheme [-mem-] (meaning to call to mind) is identified, students are encouraged to brainstorm other words that share this morpheme, encouraging them to look inside words to find the meaningful parts. Word sums are an effective grouping activity to build understanding about how meaningful word structures (morphemes) combine to construct words and play a vital role in the English spelling system (Bowers & Cooke, 2012).

Here are some examples of word sums using the base word, construct:

• construct + s = constructs
• construct + ed = constructed
• construct + ing = constructing
• construct + ive = constructive
• construct + ion = construction
• de + construct = deconstruct
• de + construct + ion = deconstruction
• re + construct + ing = reconstructing
• re + construct + ed = reconstructed
• re + construct + ion = reconstruction.

Another strategy seeking to develop morphological knowledge is the parts card strategy.

Stants’s (2013) parts card strategy is one way for teachers to introduce students to new vocabulary. The parts card strategy requires students to:

• dissect new vocabulary
• generate a meaning
• and then draw a diagram to demonstrate their understanding.

Zoski et al. (2018) have modified Stants’s parts card strategy to emphasise the language modes (reading, writing, speaking and listening). An example is below.

Image source: Pixabay.com

Etymological knowledge refers to how the history and origins of words relate to their meaning and spelling. Knowing about the origin of these words is helpful to students when learning to spell them (VCELA384).

Devonshire, Morris, and Fluck (2013) describe a word web activity:

• begin with researching the historical origins of the target word
• place this at the top of the whiteboard
• Write the morpheme (smallest meaningful units of language) of the target word in the middle of the whiteboard
• students are encouraged to brainstorm other words that share the same morpheme.

For example:

Nominalisation refers to the process of turning a verb into a noun form.

Example:

‘Consideration of this issue is vital’ instead of ‘You should consider this issue’.

It is a linguistic tool frequently used in many disciplines particularly when describing abstract ideas or making theoretical arguments. Nominalisation is less evident in spoken language but is a critical feature in written academic texts.

Compare the two examples below, taken from Derewianka and Jones (2016, p. 308):

Spoken example:

‘When plastic bags are made, toxic gases and other dangerous substances are released into the air and these by-products pollute the atmosphere and ruin water supplies.

Written example:

The production of toxic gases during the manufacture of plastic bags causes air and water pollution.

There are four clauses in the spoken example; these have been collapsed into one in the written example. As a result, the text is more dense and information is compressed. There is also a causal relationship between the production of plastic bags and the impact.

The following table (also called an anchor chart) was created by a Year 8 class as they worked on persuasive essays regarding the topic ‘Climate Change’ (VCELA397, VCELA401, VCELA415).

The class (initially led by teacher, and increasingly independently):

• identifies everyday phrases that could increase in sophistication
• brainstorms ways to nominalise these terms
• lists these on the chart

The anchor chart should be visible for the class to pool their ideas about changing every day phrases into nominalised, sophisticated language choices.

The presence of the anchor chart in the classroom creates an additional scaffold to support students in providing peer feedback to one another. They can refer to the chart to identify ways that their peers can improve their work by making nominalised word choices.

Reference chains refer ways in which links are made between items in a text to help the reader track meaning, for example, through the use of pronouns or the definite article (the) or demonstratives such as this, that, these.

To strengthen student understanding of reference chains and cohesive links, teachers can use a model text to demonstrate the interconnected ideas across a passage. This can begin at the paragraph level, in the case modelled below.

This example demonstrates how reference chains can be colour coded to show how they operate in a paragraph from Zana Fraillon’s The Bone Sparrow in a Year 8 class (VCELA414). It can also be modelled at the whole-of-text level to highlight how cohesive devices are employed in text, for example, when explicitly teaching the structure of websites in Year 7 (VCELA380).

In this example, sets of reference chains are highlighted in three different colours to show the three different sets of chains, and arrows show the linkage between the references.

Once students have had these features modelled to them, teachers can provide specific feedback to students on how to improve their writing by employing these language features, as seen in the student work sample below.

Beckham-Hungler, D., Williams, C., Smith, K., & Dudley-Marling, C. (2003). Teaching words that students misspell: Spelling instruction and young children's writing. Language Arts, 80(4), 299–309.

Bowers, P. N., & Cooke, G. (2012). Morphology and the common core building students' understanding of the written word. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 38(4), 31–35.

Critten, S., Connelly, V., Dockrell, J. E., & Walter, K. (2014). Inflectional and derivational morphological spelling abilities of children with Specific Language Impairment. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–10.

Dawson, C. (2009). Beyond checklists and rubrics: Engaging students in authentic conversations about their writing. The English Journal, 98(5), 66–71.

Derewianka, B. (2011). A new grammar companion for teachers. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association of Australia.

Derewianka, B., & Jones, P. (2016). Teaching language in context. New York: Oxford University Press.

Devonshire, V., Morris, P., & Fluck, M. (2013). Spelling and reading development: The effect of teaching children multiple levels of representation in their orthography. Learning and Instruction, 25, 85–94.

Hamawand, Z. (2011). Morphology in English: Word formation in cognitive grammar. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

Herrington, M. H., & Macken-Horarik, M. (2015). Linguistically informed teaching of spelling: Toward a relational approach. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 38(2), 61¬–71.

Oakley, G., & Fellowes, J. (2016). A closer look at spelling in the primary classroom. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association of Australia.

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content area literacy. Harvard Education Review, 78(1), 40–59.

Stants, N. (2013). Parts cards: Using morphemes to teach science vocabulary. Science Scope, 36(5), 58–63.

Westwood, P. (1994). Issues in spelling instruction. Special Education Perspectives, 3(1), 31–44.

Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2012). Literacy. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Wing Jan, L. (2009). Write ways: Modelling writing forms (3rd Ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Zoski, J.L., Nellenbach, K.M., & Erickson, K.A. (2018). Using morphological strategies to help adolescents decode, spell, and comprehend big words in science. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 40(1), 57–64.