Joanne Rossbridge and Kathy Rushton

You can also purchase the digital version of this publication.

Put it in Writing: Context, text and language has as its central focus the idea that knowing how to compose texts for a range of purposes and audiences is central to expressing ideas in all subject areas.

In this book a carefully selected group of imaginative, persuasive and informative texts, suitable for use across the primary years, are deconstructed and presented as starting points for students to compose a range of different types of texts for different purposes.

The aim of this book is to provide models, guides and processes for teachers and their students to give serious and careful thought to work with and reflect on texts valued within educational contexts. Such thought can be fostered in classrooms as conversations are initiated, developed and extended around contexts, texts and their features through students responding to the texts of others and reflecting on their own texts to develop and enhance their own compositions across contexts and modes.

Development of this book has been inspired by Exploring How Texts Work by Beverly Derewianka (1990) which was ground breaking in giving teachers tools for working with genres in their classrooms. When reflecting on the influence of this text, its focus on the choice on the purpose, structure and language features of a range of texts has been instrumental in influencing many teachers in supporting talk about texts in their classrooms whilst also having a significant impact on curriculum design in Australia and internationally (Derewianka, 2012) including the current Australian Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2012).

Each text analysed in this book will have a relevant spotlight on one aspect of language: Expressing and connecting ideas; Interacting with others and Creating cohesive and coherent texts. The texts selected for modelled reading should be building students’ knowledge at all levels of text, from word, group and sentence to paragraph and whole text (Derewianka, 2011, p.11). This will support the writing of a text of the same or similar genre as this process provides scaffolding for students at both the macro and micro levels. Shared decisions are developed about all levels and aspects of text from spelling to choices at group, clause and paragraph levels. During the joint construction the learner can draw on all their own knowledge and understanding without being solely responsible for the production of the text.

PETAA offers a wide range of professional learning. Click here to view a list of professional learning events that may relate to this topic.