Harinui syndicate are following the Stephan Graham method of ‘Explicitly Teaching Writing’. Part of that is focussing on the 7 descriptive ideas we can use in a sentence. They are number, shape, colour, texture, position, size and doing. We usually begin our Oral Story Writing by having a discussion about what we know on a topic, or have a language experience (our puppy visit) or read a book. Then we decide on a title for our story and choose about 4 of the descriptive ideas to cover in our story for the day.
This week our focus is on ‘Pets’ and we have spent time on orally writing stories about cats, birds, and then dogs over several days. Chosen children sit on a chair and become the person saying the title or sentence. The rest of the class repeats what they say. After the whole story is created the teacher models story writing and we read through the story together.
After we have shared ideas and used lots of ‘Pet’ vocabulary together we begin to create our story orally.
Our story said:
The New Cat
My cat is small.
It is red.
My cat feels soft.
It is on the bench. This was inspired by our reader called “The New Cat.”
Then we wrote a story about a pet bird. We called it “The New Bird.”
Our story was written down by Mrs O’Grady as we told it to her!
The New Bird.
Listen to us saying our oral story with Mrs de Koning. We are gaining lots of confidence and more vocabulary.
