Teaching Of Writing

            Teachers need to put great care and effort in the teaching of writing especially in the lower primary. There are a lot of strategies known to assist these young writers in the learning-to-write process. Some strategies are for generating ideas. These will allow sparks of ideas to be ignited in the pupils" minds before they start writing. Children need to know about what they are writing in order to start writing about it. And there are other strategies for assisting pupils to write.
             One of the strategies is teacher modeling. The teacher will sit all the pupils to the front of the class, preferably on the floor. She will then have an easel with a few sheets of big "mahjong paper". This strategy allows the pupils to watch closely and learn at the same time how their teacher constructs a piece of writing. More importantly, they are able to know what are the thoughts that go through the teacher's mind. However, before the teacher starts, he/she needs to have a pre-writing activity for the pupils. The teacher has to talk about the particular topic that she is going to write about. He/she needs to point to the pupils what is the purpose of writing that piece of writing. Examples of pre-writing activities are talk, draw and write, reading and responding to texts and LEA. .
             After completing the pre-writing activity, the teacher will go on and start writing her piece of writing on the big "mahjong paper" while all the pupils sit and watch. The teacher will think aloud and display all her decisions as a writer. For example, if the teacher is writing a letter, she will say out aloud whatever the process of writing a letter is. This will allow the pupils to learn as they observe how a piece of letter is written-the format, structure and how to present the ideas and information. The teacher may even show some cancellations if she wants to exclude any part of her writing or some corrections. Also, she can show to the pupils how she puts the inverted "v" sign if she wants to include additional information after writing the full sentence already.