| NSW Department of Education

Effective writing
Strategies for targeting learner needs
Students don’t know how or where to start
Teachers need to first consider whether students have sufficient background
knowledge about the topic they will write about. If not, teachers need to build the
field. This is most beneficial when done through a shared experience so that teachers
are able to support students with content knowledge and vocabulary. Listening to a
guest speaker, reading a quality text, attending an incursion or excursion, undertaking
a science experiment, sharing a cultural experience, viewing a website or video, or
listening to a podcast are just some of the many ways students can build up the
necessary topic knowledge and vocabulary to create texts.

Jointly developing word banks for reference throughout the writing process will
ensure students have the appropriate language and vocabulary for writing. This will
lighten the cognitive load for students as they write, and they will be better able to
focus on how to best communicate their message.

If teachers are confident that their students have the vocabulary and background
knowledge required to inform their writing, the next step is to support students with
idea generation. The following questions may be helpful:

• Who is your audience?

• What is your purpose for writing?
• What is your main idea?
• What is the most important message you want to communicate?

Teachers may need to work back through the Support cycle for teaching writing and
deconstruct exemplars or engage in modelled or shared writing to prepare students
for independent construction, remembering that think alouds are vital in this stage.

Imitation

After reading a quality text, draw students’ attention to the structure of a well-crafted
sentence, then use the same structure to write a similar text. This task can be
extended to a whole paragraph or text excerpt for students who have mastered
strong sentence construction.

education.nsw.gov.au
 The POW strategy

This strategy may also help. In this strategy, students:

• Pick ideas (i.e. decide what to write about)

• Organise notes (i.e. brainstorm and organise possible writing ideas into a plan)
• Write and say more (i.e. add detail to writing)

Students don’t have a plan / don’t know how to plan

“Teaching students to plan can actually enhance their creativity. If students are
working from a plan, they’re liberated from the need to figure out the overall structure
of what they’re writing as they go along. As a result, they have the mental space they
need to conjure up vivid imagery or telling details.” (Hochman and Wexler 2017:70)

Draw, Talk, Write, Share

The importance of drawing and talking before writing cannot be overstated. In this
strategy, students begin by drawing and talking about their ideas, then add writing
when they are ready. Encouraging students to draw engages them and supports them
to construct a visual text that carries meaning. Encouraging students to talk as they
draw provides them with opportunities to practise the oral language and vocabulary
necessary to write.

Mind maps and graphic organisers

The Department of Education’s Digital Learning Selector has a number of resources to

support students as they plan their writing, including simple graphic organisers,
writing scaffolds and frameworks to guide brainstorming. There are also Frayer
diagrams and frameworks for concept mapping for more experienced writers in the
planning stage.

Sentences do not end with punctuation

In this instance, teachers need to:
• Look at examples of decodables and quality texts and have students identify
the punctuation marks.
• Hide the punctuation marks in texts with post its and have students identify
which sentence boundary punctuation would be most appropriate for the
sentence.
• Present students with sentences that relate to topics covered in other learning
areas and have students add end punctuation (e.g. Swim between the flags__,
How do you balance on one leg__, Look out__, Where is my hat__ ).

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 Writing does not make sense
Scrambled sentences
In this activity, teachers provide students with scrambled sentences and students
rearrange the words so that each sentence makes sense. This activity develops and
hones the concept of complete sentences, correct word order and punctuation and
capitalisation rules. It also encourages careful reading. When used across curriculum
areas, this activity can deepen students’ understanding of content and new
vocabulary.

Students can either copy the sentences down in the correct order, or can cut and
paste. Teachers can differentiate this task in a number of ways, the most obvious
being content. Teachers can also differentiate by process. In the first example below,
the first word of the scrambled sentence is capitalised and the full stop is there as a
reminder. In the second example, there are no additional clues to support students.

Scrambled sentence: a moon lay little light In a leaf. the the egg on of

Unscrambled sentence: In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf.

(Excerpt from The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle)

Scrambled sentence: functions take in life cytoplasm most the place

Unscrambled sentence: Most life functions take place in the cytoplasm.

Students use sentence fragments

When students are introduced to the concept of a complete sentence, as opposed to a
fragment, it is helpful to explain that fragments are fine in conversation, but that
written speech requires more precision. Teachers can give students examples of
fragments and ask them to correct them by supplying the missing elements. Students
may need significant practice working with examples before they can recognise
fragments in their own writing.

• Give students oral practice with fragments before written practice. For example,
“Had a great meal last night” or “Robert and Jack”. Provide prompts such as:

2 Effective writing — Strategies for targeting learner needs

 Does that tell us who ate a great meal? We need to know what they did. Let's
make this fragment into a complete sentence.

• Provide students with a number of fragments and sentences (without

punctuation) and have students label each with S for sentence or F for
fragment. Students then turn each into a complete sentence with correct
punctuation. For example:

Fragment: established in New South Wales in 1788

Sentence: In 1788, the penal colony of New South Wales was established on the
Country of the Gadigal people.

Students use too many simple sentences

Creating compound sentences using because, but, so
This activity can be used for any grade or content area and still challenge students. In
this activity, the conjunctions because, but and so encourage extended responses
from students. This activity supports idea development, builds students’ ability to
conjoin ideas with fluidity and supports their understanding of subordination and
coordination. For example, the conjunction but requires students to hold 2 contrasting
ideas in their minds.

• Provide students with a sentence stem and have them write 3 different
sentences using the words because, but and so. For example, I feel tired today.
Recycling is important. Fractions are like decimals.

o Fractions are like decimals because they are all parts of wholes.
o Fractions are like decimals but they are written differently.
o Fractions are like decimals so they can be used interchangeably.

Sentence expansion using who, what, when, where, why, how

Using a scaffold, students begin by considering the who, what, when, where, why and
how of their text. They then combine this information to expand on a simple sentence.

This activity can be extended using a more detailed scaffold that requires students to
consider additional details to the who, what, when, where, why and how of their text.
Students read their ideas and combine them to create compound or complex
sentences.

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 Sentences are not detailed enough
While each sentence is constantly expandable, students need to learn that some
details enhance a piece of writing while others can detract from a piece writing. This
only comes from repeated practice and experimentation. Some activities to support
sentence expansion are listed below.

Glow and Grow

1. Listen to a student explain their drawing or writing
2. Add a positive comment (Glow)
3. Use questioning to guide the student to enhance their drawing or writing by
adding details (Grow)

Teacher: Read your writing for me please.

Student: I can see a shark.

Teacher: Your sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, that’s
fabulous. Now… in the book we read that there are thousands of creatures that live
in the ocean, it’s really full of life. I wonder if you could add something to your
writing that gives me the idea that there’s more in the ocean. What could your
sentence say?

Student: I can see lots of sharks?

Teacher: Yes, that would make your reader understand the number of sharks in the
sea. Is there anything else in the sea?

Student: Yeah! Fish, jellyfish, octopus… seaweed, shells…

Teacher: That’s right! So your sentence says ‘I can see a shark’, how could you add
to your writing?

Student: I can see a shark and fish and pretty shells.

Teacher: Excellent, I think that would really help your reader understand more
about the ocean, don’t you think?

Student: Yeah.

Combining sentences
One component of successful writing instruction is explicit teaching of sentence
combining. Sentence combining is an instructional technique used to improve

4 Effective writing — Strategies for targeting learner needs

 sentence quality, complexity and variety. This activity targets incomplete sentences,
run-on sentences, overly simple or repetitive sentences, and the overuse of ‘and’. In
this activity, students are taught how to combine 2 or more basic sentences to create
more interesting, sophisticated and varied sentences. For example:

The baby cried. + The baby was hungry. = The hungry baby cried.

As students become more proficient with simple sentence combining, this technique
may be used to teach students to create complex sentences, for example:

The baby cried. + The baby was hungry. + The baby needed changing. = The hungry
baby, who also needed changing, cried.

For even further detail, students could add an adverb, for example:

The hungry baby, who also needed changing, cried loudly.

The hungry baby, who also needed changing, cried longingly.

The hungry baby, who also needed changing, cried relentlessly.

Appositives
Appositives, descriptors in sentences, rename or elaborate on a noun in a sentence.

The definition above describes what an appositive is, while giving an example in a
sentence. Another example may be: Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime
minister, gave a rousing speech about sexism and misogyny against the Leader of the
Opposition at the time.

Appositives build students’ ability to expand their ideas within a sentence and add
details, and reduces redundancy and disconnectedness of multiple repetitive
sentences. This complex grammatical and syntactical feature must be taught
explicitly and revised repeatedly as there is more complex punctuation expectations.

Students do not vary sentence types

Sentence types
In this activity, students learn about 4 different sentences: a statement, question,
exclamation and command or call to action. As always, showing students quality

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 examples and having students practice orally before writing will best support their
development. Possible variations to this task include:

• Write a statement, question, exclamation and command or call to action about

deforestation

• Write a sentence of each type using the word hinder or any of its forms
(hindering, hindered, hindrance)

• Write a sentence of each type using the visual prompt image

• Write 3 questions about natural disasters

Students do not use topic vocabulary

New vocabulary
When discussing new topic vocabulary, it is important for teachers to display this
vocabulary and keep referring to it throughout the learning. Word banks and anchor
charts can be very helpful for students when time is taken by the teacher to put them
together collegially with students, and as the vocabulary is introduced.

Setting writing criteria

Encourage students to provide more detail by setting writing criteria. For example,
after a trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens, could students write a sentence about
medicinal plants, starting with Surprisingly? Could they write another sentence using
the word medicinal and some form of the word extract (e.g. extracting, extraction)?
Could they write a one-sentence description of a flower without using the name of the
flower?

Some tasks above were adapted from Australian Education Research Organisation
(2022) Hochman and Wexler (2017), Lenov (2017), Quigley (2022) Sedita (2016)

6 Effective writing — Strategies for targeting learner needs