Actis Scenarios

Literacy activities

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Use the Smash script as a stimulus for the text level work as part of your literacy session. Link your current learning objective with an activity below.

Journalistic writing (writing composition): four literacy sessions

Also includes work on active and passive verbs, opportunities for work on active and passive voice, alliteration and punctuation usage.

Session one Session two Session three Session four Further activity: Instructions Further activity: Rules Further activity: Letters

Further activities

Instructional texts (reading comprehension and writing composition)

Ask the children to bring in (or collect yourself) a collection of instructional texts. For example, how to build a cabinet, or instructions for programming a video. (Some DIY stores have a collection of instructions for a variety of jobs.) Gardening texts can also offer instructions as can computer games, or Internet CDs.

Divide the class into groups of three to five. Make sure each group has at least three different types of instructional text. Give them time to look at each one and then ask them to put them in order of which they thought were the best.

Bring the class together and ask each group to give their order, (without explanation). Now ask each group to give three reasons why their best was the best and two reasons why their worst was the worst. As a class, compare what groups feel is important in the instructional text, and come up with a list of dos and don'ts for giving instructions.

Encourage children to consider:

Audience: Is the text appropriate for who will be reading it?
Language: How hard/easy is the text to read? Is it written in 1st person, 3rd person or another format?
Sequence: How is the text organised? Are there connectives? Perhaps there are bullets or numbers?
Presentation: Consider graphics, photos, cartoons etc.
Layout: Consider the visual impact on the page - is it an A4 sheet, a booklet, etc.

Children might also mention that there is too much or too little information. Children should decide how to improve their worst piece of instructional text, and also re-evaluate their original decisions.

Using the list of important aspects of instruction text, children are to write their own instruction text for a child of a similar age. The text could be:

How to ride a bicycle.
How to maintain and care for a bicycle.
Instructions on riding a bicycle in the dark, or other weather conditions.
How to choose and wear a safety helmet.

Use the Internet to research this work - try a child search engine (yahooligans.com, ajkids.com, aol.com/netfind/kids) and type 'bike safety'. Alternatively check out some of the websites listed later in the teachers' resources.