Teaching with Writelike

• Narrative writing is about more than entertainment; it's about modelling the world in terms of characters, context, and behaviour.
• It requires all sorts of skills related to description, perspective, and cause & effect.
• Each narrative lesson explores a concept through text snippets from multiple sources.
• The lessons explore each concept in detail.
• They also have a fair amount of overlap.
• The effect is cumulative.
• Most are suitable for middle years, though some Narrative Skills lessons might be better for slightly older students.

• Some lesson packs offer standalone, one-off lessons.
• Some offer a sequence of lessons that build on each other.
• Narrative project lessons explore in detail one snippet of text from a single source.

• Informational writing is about gathering observations and data and organising them into factual reports (which requires skill with relationships and hierarchies).
• Each lesson explores a concept through text snippets from multiple sources.
• The lessons explore each concept in detail.
• Most are suitable for middle years and older.

Note: We use the term genre loosely here, blurring narrative genres and nonfiction text types.

Genre Intros

• Genre Intro lessons introduce conventions from a single genre (such as horror, sci-fi, etc) using multiple snippets.
• These are great sample-pack style lessons, and very practical for students interested in a particular genre.

Remixing Genres

• Genre Remix lessons are like party games, with a distinct format.
• Students are given a single image and then each activity asks them to write about the image content using a different genre.
• These are fun casual lessons with lots of opportunities for creative play.

• These lessons teach applied, functional grammar.
  • There's good evidence to indicate that teaching prescriptivist grammar does nothing to improve writing skills, and is possibly counterproductive.
  • However, functional grammar is accessible and useful as a toolkit for analysing how mentor texts work (and how they can be modelled).
• Each grammar lesson explores a single concept through multiple snippets.
• There are no "right" answers to any activity (although there can definitely be wrong answers).
• In the Functional Grammar lessons, we're building skills in the underlying mechanics of the English language.
• In the Expressive Punctuation lessons, we show how simple punctuation can create expressive effects.

• Snippet-a-Day lessons provide one brief snippet per page, with minimal commentary.
• They are perfect as daily quick-writes.

Quick, simple lessons that use authentic snippets to provide spelling and punctuation practice.