2020 Department Goal - Literacy Strategy 'Explanation Writing' for Digital Technologies
One of the Technology Department Goals for 2020 was based on Literacy, in alignment with the School Goal 2 for Literacy and Numeracy.
The Technology Department Literacy Goal for 2020 is:
To develop ‘Explanation Writing’ classroom display resources for each specialist technology subject, based on SOLO taxonomy
After the department literacy session on understanding the Explanation Writing process, I developed an 'Explanation Writing' template for Digital Technologies. I shared this with Marc Milford, who provided feedback and changes as shown below.
Discussion Points about the Explanation Writing Digital Technologies poster
In order for teachers to assist learners with fluent writing, beyond the use of sentence starters, it is important to master three types of functional verbs used in writing. These are:
- relational verbs (small auxiliary verbs that express tense)
- mental verbs (what you do in your head)
- action verbs
Final Writing Explanation Poster for Digital Technologies
The Final Writing Explanation Poster for Digital Technologies looks as follows. This will be colour printed, laminated, and displayed on my classroom wall.
Next Steps
I have been developing a slide deck of Academic Writing that relates to Game Development. The academic writing exemplar follows SOLO taxonomy, and I intend using this as an exemplar with my students, to support them to gain Merit and Excellence. I am seeking feedback and support from Marc Milford, after which, I will be further developing the exemplar to follow the Explanation Writing model demonstrated in the poster. This will enable a Visual Representation to be used on my classroom wall, Working Exemplars that the students can follow, and hopefully the consistency of the design, both within my own practice, and also across the department, will reinforce the key literacy features that we are wanting our learners to apply in their own work.
As a department, Marc Milford has been providing feedback to Technology staff on their Explanation Writing Posters, such as the Digital Technologies poster shown in this post. Marc is going to attend our department meeting, and give an overview and explanation of the feedback that he has provided, and changes that he may have made to our posters. From there, we will be looking at literacy strategies that we will address in the future with our learners.
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