Information report: Old and new toys
During a four-week unit of work on information texts, the class looked at a range of information books and talked about their features and layout. Before writing an information report, Nikita made notes on her own choice of subject matter: Old and new toys. Children were provided with preformatted paper as an aid to organisation and layout, although in Nikita's case this seemed to be more of a hindrance.
Both reports are dated by the pupil and identified with the pupil's handwritten name. They are titled Report template and have a printed statement at the top, which reads 'Use this template to write your report. Write on the lines and draw pictures in the boxes.' Each page contains two boxes for illustration next to ruled lines. There are three boxes at the bottom of the page.
Report 1 is dated 14.5.08, with the name Nikita hand-written in the top-left corner. It contains the following.
Writing area 1: [pupil's handwriting] Dolls house | It is made from plastick vcitorian children play with a dolls house
Picture box 1: a pupil's hand-drawn illustration of a doll's house, with the handwritten text 'a dolls house'.
Picture box 2: [empty]
Writing area 2: [pupil's handwriting] Open it up and move the doll around. A nintendo is made out of pastkr. You open the top and press the boutns.
Picture box 3: [pupil's handwriting] did you know this dolls house is over a 100 years old.
Picture box 4: [pupil's handwriting] did you know the dolls are made from wood
Picture box 5: [pupil's handwriting] did you know the dolls house has lots of windos.
Report 2 is dated 15.5.08, with the name Nikita hand-written in the top-left corner. It contains the following.
Writing area 1: [pupil's handwriting] Chilren and adut play with a nintendo ds
Picture box 1: [empty]
Picture box 2: [pupil's handwriting] Did you know [�kow� is crossed out] a nintendo ds are didfrint cuous.
Writing area 2: [pupil's handwriting] and it is fun to play whith.
Picture box 3: [empty]
Picture box 4: [empty]
Picture box 5: [empty]
At the end of this page, the teacher has written 'Well done. You can write a report. You have remembered to use capital letters. [this last line is highlighted in green, as are the capital letters in the text.] Now you can start to join up your writing'. [this last line is highlighted in pink, as are the the words 'victorian' and 'aduts' in the text.]
Clements, S., Tomlinson, F. and Evans, J. (2007). Originally published in 100 Literacy Framework Lessons Year 1 (Scholastic, ISBN 9780439945219). Copyright © Sylvia Clements, Fiona Tomlinson and Jean Evans. Used with kind permission.
Assessment commentary
- On the first page of the report, Nikita tries to squeeze in straightforward information about what the toys are like with comments about what 'you' have to do to play with them, plus a mini-quiz. Different sentence types (statements, instructions, questions) are used for these purposes (AF5 L2 b1 and b2), but the time references are not consistent: 'Victorian children play with a dolls house. Open it up and move the dolls around' (not AF5 L2 b3).
- Clause structure is grammatically correct, as is sentence demarcation apart from the lack of question marks in the 'did you know?' section (AF6 L2 b1 and b2).
- AF3 and AF4 are not easily applicable as an organisational template was provided. Nikita has some problems in using this writing frame to present her ideas clearly. She uses only one illustration, mixes up information about the different toys and overrides the format completely in the 'did you know' facts for the Nintendo DS (AF4 L1 b1).
- Content is repetitive and word choices do not help to contrast 'old' and 'new' toys (AF1 L2 b1).
- The template makes an assessment of AF2 difficult. Nikita appears to have an idea of how to write a report, but struggles to accommodate the layout given (AF2 L1 b1).
- Vocabulary is straightforward and key words are repeated (AF7 L2 b1).
- Phonetically plausible spelling, but some inconsistencies in spelling in both content and grammatical function words, for example 'plastic', 'children', 'with' and problems with double letters, for example 'different', 'buttons' (AF8 L1 b1 and b2).
- Nikita's handwriting shows an initial attempt to use entry and exit strokes, but not sustained (Handwriting and presentation L1 b1, b2 and b3).
