The Roles of Teacher and Text in a Jointly Constructed Text
The following extract comes from PETAA book Teaching the Language of Climate Change Science, written by Julie Hayes and Bronwyn Parkin, published in 2021.
The role of the text
A jointly constructed written text, also known as ‘joint construction’, has several purposes.
- It is a record of the learning so far.
- It provides the opportunity for the teacher to check what students understand, and which parts of the content or the language need to be revisited.
- It turns the vocabulary already recorded in the class notes into sentences and paragraphs, by adding ‘written-like’ grammar with the help of the teacher.
- The text can just remain as a class text. However, because it represents a good, logical text structure and contains useful grammar, it can also become a model text for further, explicit teaching of grammar, and for the final move to independent writing (just like the EAL/D teaching and learning cycle; DSP 1994).
The role of the teacher
The role of the teacher is to lead the negotiation about what to write, with the goal of creating a quality text that closely resembles the focus text written in planning. It’s not a free-for-all, because chances are that students, even working from the class notes, will produce a ‘spoken-like’ text, using technical language cobbled together with oral grammar, such as ‘and then …’. To illustrate the process of leading a joint construction, examples are provided from class notes recorded in a 'What are living things?' class.
1. Working from the class notes, the teacher first states the goal.
Teacher: Today we’re going to write the introduction to our text about living things. We’re going to write the first paragraph that answers the question ‘What are living things?’
2. The teacher next draws student attention to the class notes.
Teacher: We don’t have to get this information out of our heads. That’s why we’ve written our class notes. We’ll use the class notes to find our information.
3. The teacher draws attention to the first heading.
Teacher: So first of all we are going to write their name. We’re going to give the scientific name of living things. (Points to notes.) Can you see what they’re called? Yes, organisms. So how could we write that? (Teacher doesn’t wait for an answer.) We could say ‘Living things …’
Student: Are organisms.
Teacher: Yes, that’s good. Let’s write that. (Begins to scribe.) LIVING THINGS … Shall we say ‘on Earth’ because that’s where we find living things? Do you like that? ON EARTH ARE ORGANISMS. Great, let’s read that together and see where we’re up
to.
4. The teacher draws attention to the next heading.
Teacher: (Points to notes.) Now we are going to write the two types of organisms. What are they?
Student: Plants, animals.
Teacher: Yes, so we could say … ORGANISMS ARE…
Students: Plants and animals.
5. Keep re-reading as you go, so that the meaning continues to accumulate, and to encourage fluent reading. It is quite possible that students are reading grammatical structures they’ve never thought of before, and repeated reading helps them to become familiar.
6. If a student offers a contribution that is correct but without the grammar that we want, we don’t want to reject their offering. Instead we can say:
Teacher: Yes, that’s absolutely right. And how would a scientist say that? We could say …
7. If we check for understanding from students and it’s not there, we may need to go back to a diagram or video, or to an early activity to remind the students.
Teacher: What’s a thorax? Can someone show me on this diagram?
8. This is slow, careful, cognitively demanding work. It requires thoughtful, active negotiation with students, and checking of understanding. It takes practice to keep students engaged. As a guide, 15 minutes in the Early Years is sufficient, 20 to 30 minutes in middle to upper primary classrooms.