Sue Parminter is one of the authors of Level Up, a new Primary course that helps young learners take their English to the next level by fostering a mindset of continuous improvement and resilience.
Hopefully you’ve read part one of Sue’s process writing series. In this follow-up post, let’s return to the table showing the stages of process writing:
| Before writing | While writing | After writing |
| Getting ideas Organizing ideas |
Writing the first draft | Revising Editing |
This time, let’s examine the ‘while writing’ stage, using the same picture:
Part 1 finished by having learners write sentences describing the picture using beach vocabulary, there is / there are… pattern sentences and basic location phrases. But a series of sentences like this is a written grammar drill. It does not have the variety needed in a description. How can we help students to work at the ‘whole text’ level?
Lead by example
One way is to give an example of what we want learners to produce. Here’s a model description:
This is a picture of a beach. It’s a sunny day. On the left in the foreground, we can see a man. He’s sitting on a blue and white towel and he’s wearing black and yellow shorts. Next to him, there are some sunglasses. In front of him, there is some watermelon. The sea is behind him. On the right in the background, there are some grey rocks. At the bottom on the left, we can see a blue rubber ring. At the top on the right, we can see a red and white plane in the sky. There’s a crab between the starfish and the shell on the sand.
This is varied. Apart from beach vocabulary, it contains:
| Prepositions of place | in, on, next to, in front of, behind, between |
| Colours | blue, white, black, yellow, grey, red |
| Location words | left, right, foreground, background, top, bottom |
| Different verb patterns | there is / there are, is sitting / wearing, we can see, it is / the sea is |
But how do you get learners interacting with the model? It won’t do to say: “Here’s a description. Now you write one.” That’s not engaging.
Wait, his shorts weren’t pink…
One fun alternative is giving the learners a description with factual mistakes in, like this:
This is a picture of a beach. It’s a rainy day. On the left in the foreground, we can see a man. He’s sitting on a green and white towel and wearing black and pink shorts. Next to him, there are some reading glasses. In front of him, there is some cake. The sea is behind him. On the right in the background, there are some white rocks. At the bottom on the left, we can see a purple rubber ring. At the top on the right, we can see a red and white balloon in the sky. There’s a crab between the bucket and the spade on the sand.
Once you’ve distributed this imperfect model, tell learners, “This description has ten factual mistakes in it. Find and underline them.”
This is a picture of a beach. It’s a rainy day. On the left in the foreground, we can see a man. He’s sitting on a green and white towel and he’s wearing black and pink shorts. Next to him, there are some reading glasses. In front of him, there is some cake. The sea is behind him. On the right in the background, there are some white rocks. At the bottom on the left, we can see a purple rubber ring. At the top on the right, we can see a red and white balloon in the sky. There’s a crab between the bucket and the spade on the sand.
Once learners have finished and you’ve gone over the answers, have them rewrite the description, correcting the mistakes and adding some extra sentences. This way, they will write their first draft with support.
This post follows on from Process writing for primary classes (Part 1). You can find lots more ideas for young learners on our Cambridge Primary page.