6 — Patterns in sentences: Part 1
Sequence focus points
- Literature: focus texts – informative texts with the theme of spiders; class library suggestions – imaginative and informative texts with the theme of spiders.
- Patterns: patterns in sentence writing – words that tell us ‘what is happening’, ‘who or what is involved’ and ‘other information’; patterns in words – onset and rime.
- Reading: reading for information; reading sentences from the previous sequence.
- Writing: modelled writing – recording facts, using sentence punctuation, using onset and rime as a spelling strategy.
Revisit and re-read the sentences written during the previous sequence. Reproduce the sentences on coloured card, demonstrating the parts of a sentence. For example, red for the part of the sentence that tells ‘who or what is involved’, green for the part of the sentence that tells ‘what is happening’ and blue for ‘other information’. Read the colour coded sentences aloud to the class and explain the coding.
Activity 1: Writing for a purpose
Remind the students of the reading they have been doing during independent reading and the information they have been discovering about caterpillars and butterflies. The KWL chart (what we Know, what we Want to know, what we Learnt) is a graphic organiser that allows students to activate their prior knowledge, focus their research and reinforce new learning. Use the KWL chart to record what is known about spiders and spiders’ webs (the K part of the chart), and jointly decide what the students want to know about spiders and their webs (the W part of the chart). Tell the students that they will complete the L section after they have gathered more information. ACELY1646, ACELY1651
A KWL (or what is Known, what we Want to know, what we Learnt) chart is a graphic organiser that allows students to activate their prior knowledge, focus their research and reinforce new learning.
Activity 2: Modelled reading – reading for information
Use an informative text about spiders to model reading for information with the students. Pose questions such as:
- What did that page tell us about spiders?
- What new information did we learn there?
- This page has the heading Spiders’ diet. What do you think this might tell us?
- If we want to answer our question about baby spiders, which page should we re-read?
Activity 3: Jointly constructed writing – recording information
Re-read the KWL chart ‘W’ column and ask the students what they have learnt. Fill in the ‘L’ section of the chart. This could refer to the book they have read and include joint construction and spelling skills of sounding out using onset and rime. Remind the students of the use of capital letters and full stops in sentences. ACELA1432, ACELA1435, ACELA1438, ACELA1440, ACELT1578
Activity 4: Language focus – sentence grammar
Refer back to the colour coded sentences and reproduce some of the sentences in the ‘L’ column of the KWL chart in a similar manner. Read the sentences together and briefly discuss the sentence level grammar of each sentence, asking questions such as: