Genre writing in primary school: from theory to the classroom, via first steps (1).

Thwaite, Anne

Introduction

The context for this small case study is a class in a Western Australian primary school, classified by the government as a 'Priority' school, meaning that the community in which the school is based is seen as significantly disadvantaged in its economic and social circumstances. At the time when this study was undertaken, special funding was made available to such schools.

The twenty-one children in the class investigated were aged approximately eight years and in their third year of formal schooling. They came from Australian Aboriginal, Anglo-Australian, Greek and Macedonian backgrounds. The teacher had undergone four years of training, and had been teaching for ten years. She held a position of authority at the school, was a union representative and a coordinator of the 'Priority' program, managing decisions about the ways in which the school's special funding could be spent to the advantage of the students. She was also involved in the homework centre which the Aboriginal students attended after school, and was studying Japanese at night. After the period of this study she travelled to teaching positions in Japan and the United Kingdom. She appeared highly involved in her work and very receptive to new ideas and experiences.

The study took place over ten weeks, during which time the researcher visited the class weekly for a period of approximately three hours. The teacher and students welcomed the researcher into the class, firstly as an observer and later as an occasional helper with simple tasks such as spelling.

Background to the First Steps materials and genre theory

In Western Australia more than 90% of primary schools have been inserviced in a literacy program called 'First Steps'. The program covers the areas of 'Oral language', Reading, Writing and Spelling and consists of both 'Developmental Continua', which describe some of the things students are able to do with English, and 'Resource Books', which contain practical ideas for classroom activities and management (Education Department of Western Australia, 1997a-f). In the second edition of the materials, the 'Developmental Continua' have been replaced by 'Maps of Development' (Annandale, Bindon, Handley, Johnston, Lockett & Lynch, 2004a,b). The First Steps 'Writing Resource Book' includes a version of the genre theory expounded by Martin, Rothery, Derewianka and others. Derewianka is acknowledged as a 'particular contributor'.

As noted by a scholar from the United States of America, 'Australia is the place in which practitioners have been most successful in applying genre theory and research to pedagogy' (Johns, 2002, p. 5). The Australian version of genre theory derives from work commenced in Sydney in the 1980s. Reacting to the 'personal growth' model of writing which was very popular at the time, it aimed to specify the linguistic features of particular types of writing in order that students could be specifically apprenticed into the writing styles they would need to master for success at school and beyond. There was a social justice perspective behind the genre movement in that groups of students who were already disadvantaged were the ones shown to be least likely to succeed when subjected to the 'learning to write by writing' advocated by the process writing movement. It still remains an objective of genre theorists to 'strip away much of the mystery that still surrounds writing activity and make it more genuinely accessible to all students' (Christie, 2005, p. 20).

The genre approach involves a close analysis of texts using Systemic Functional Linguistics. This type of linguistics 'is centrally concerned with showing how the organization of language is related to its use' (Martin, 1997, p. 4), thus giving priority to examining texts in their socio-cultural context.

As part of the work of the Language and Social Power, Disadvantaged Schools and Write it Right projects, as well as other genre-based work, the range and features of genres most commonly used in primary and secondary schools were identified. Out of this close analysis of texts arose a 'genre-based' literacy pedagogy and 'curriculum cycle'. The main 'phases' of this methodology are described in Derewianka (1990, p. 6-9):

* Preparation: deciding which genres will most appropriately be involved in meeting the outcomes of a particular unit of work, and determining students' previous knowledge of these genres.

* Modelling: familiarising the students with the relevant genre through immersion and exploring sample texts. This involves discussing the social purposes for the text type and looking at its schematic structure (the stages it goes through to achieve its purpose). Additionally, the function of each stage should be identified. Derewianka downplays the importance of language features in this phase, saying, 'you can also refer to language features other than the structure of the text, but it's probably most helpful to start with a picture of the text as a whole.' (p. 8)

* Joint construction: the whole class, a small group or a teacher/child part write a text in the chosen genre together.

Again at this phase Derewianka emphasises structures rather than language features, which are not mentioned.

* Independent construction of text: students may now be ready to write their own draft text in the chosen genre, referring to models, consulting with peers and conferencing with the teacher. There may be a demonstrated need to re-enter the modelling and joint construction stages of the cycle.

Derewianka emphasises that once students 'have gained control of the basic features, they may move on to exploit the genre more creatively' (p. 9), i.e., that specific knowledge of the genre should not become a straitjacket for the students, as some critics of the approach have suggested. Macken-Horarik (2002, p. 41) reinforces this point as she emphasises that aspects of the curriculum cycle are 'part of a repertoire of teaching strategies, not a pedagogic sequence set in concrete.' Derewianka's book (1994) deals explicitly with the social purposes, schematic structures and language features of six genres commonly found in primary schools. This information has been quite directly transferred into the First Steps Writing Resource Book. Derewianka also addresses specific teaching points associated with each of the chosen genres.

While some critics of the genre approach have claimed that it is too prescriptive, in its original form it did not aim to dictate the genres that should be used in schools, rather to analyse what was there. However, the fact that the theory has been channelled into teaching resources and curriculum materials may produce a tendency to reify it.

Uptake of genre theory by Western Australian teachers

Much of the early work on genre theory in schools took place in New South Wales, and there are documented cases of teachers using it there, for example by Macken-Horarik, who found that teachers used the curriculum cycle in ways that differed greatly from each other (2002, p. 26). In Western Australia some aspects of this Australian genre theory have been very enthusiastically taken up, in particular the schematic structures or 'frameworks' of the genres. These schematic structures are presented in the First Steps materials in the form of plans, as the following figures (Figures 1-4) illustrate. It is a common experience to walk into a Western Australian primary classroom and find one or more of these genre frameworks displayed on the wall. However, lower-level linguistic features of the genres, such as the grammatical realisations, have received less attention. It should be noted that the background knowledge which teachers have of English grammar may be a limiting factor here. While teachers who trained before the 1970s usually have a good foundation in traditional grammar, unfortunately since then the emphasis on any sort of grammar has decreased, and teachers may not feel confident with categories such as 'generalised participants', 'simple past tense' or 'cohesive ties', which appear in First Steps.

[FIGURES 1-4 OMITTED]

This paper focuses on how the teacher in this Year 3 class implemented some of the ideas about genre which she had accessed both from the First Steps written materials and from inservicing sessions run by the Education Department of Western Australia. Although this study is grounded in a local site, it has wider implications in illustrating some of the relationships between academic theory and classroom practices.

The teacher's views on writing

The teacher had been using the First Steps program in her classroom for three or four years. As her school was one of the earlier schools to make use of the program, she had attended both the draft inservices and the updated ones which followed the expansion of the program. In her role as a Key Teacher she had helped parents and other staff learn about the program. She emphasised that she still needed to keep referring back to the First Steps books, as 'you have to take on a little bit at a time'. She used the books both for tracking the children's progress and as a source of teaching strategies. She made use of progress files, class testing, checklists and observations for noting the children's progress in writing. Standardised testing occurred twice a year. However, in general she tried to steer away from too much testing.

The teacher described herself as 'a bit of an eclectic person':

 I like using things out of the Eureka, I like using things out of
 the First Steps, I like using the Big Books, I like using themes,
 so I'm a bit of a person that takes from all over the place.

She outlined her views on writing different genres:

 I don't teach the genres separately ... I don't think, 'OK, I'm
 going to do narrative now'. It's what's fitting to the theme that
 I've got.... I think at the beginning of the year I would do
 recount, 'cause if they can't do a recount then you're going to
 have problems doing anything else. I like narrative because I think
 that's one of the areas which I like, so I always make sure I do
 that.... The procedural one, ... that kind of happens not as a
 separate thing, but when I, we're doing a theme. So like today we
 did pirates' biscuits, so then the procedural ... process will come
 through it. So some of them just kind of slip intermittently in;
 the ones that I probably focus on as a teaching style would be the
 recount, the report and the narrative, and then the procedural one
 I'll just slip in kind of intermittently.

She explained that she treated the different genres somewhat differently:

 The recount you really have to do properly, the narrative I think
 you just give them the basics and the confidence that they can write
 something and it doesn't have to always be correct or, it doesn't
 have to be the same as the person next to them, 'cause a lot of them
 are just so scared of taking a risk that it's like just trying to
 think, 'yes, you have got an imagination, you know, what you write
 is not wrong because it's different from so-&-so, or theirs is not
 better', so a lot of the time I think I'm just trying to give them
 the confidence that they can do it and to take a risk to do it,
 ... and then hopefully they'll expand it as the year goes on.

As she said, 'I think all the genres have to be worked on from Year 1 to 7.' (Teacher interview, visit 8)

The types of writing done in this classroom

During the time of this study the class were observed to be writing Recounts, Narratives and Procedures. As the teacher stated:

 I really think ... that I've only given them a taste of the
 different things, like, you know, I don't think I can cover
 everything properly. (Teacher interview, visit 8)

Narratives

The focus of this discussion will be on Narrative, as the students were observed working on this from initial beginnings through to 'publication'. This process took approximately one month, although obviously the children were taking part in other literacy activities during this time. The topic of their Narrative, chosen by the teacher, was 'My Day in Outer Space'.

The texts presented here are selected from those that reached the 'publishing' stage. These were typed up on the computer by a staff member and were displayed on the wall of the classroom. There were thirteen 'published' texts in all. It cannot be assumed that these texts are necessarily the ones that were most valued by the teacher, as some others were not ready for publishing due to a student being absent or perhaps a slower writer. In fact, two of the texts presented here are from students described by the teacher as the 'worst writers'.

The teacher emphasised the diversity in her class, and this is evident in these texts. The texts which were judged by the teacher as being the more successful in achieving the purpose of a Narrative were the ones that conformed to the basic narrative structure proposed by the genre theorists and presented in the First Steps materials, i.e. Orientation^ Complication^Resolution. The texts that were judged as the most successful also had additional features valued in a Narrative, such as a series of Complications and Resolutions, Justification, Description, Maintenance of Tension and a Coda. The teacher mentioned to the researcher that overall she was not particularly satisfied with the way that the class was writing Narratives and that she felt that they needed more practice. She also felt that there may be some limitations with the First Steps approach:

 Sometimes when they've got the ... framework ... it limits them,
 (be)cause they think, 'Oh, oh, OK, I've done the (plan), I've said
 I was going to write this, so I ...' and they don't think they can
 change, and they get so caught up in the plan, and, 'OK, I've done
 the first step, I've done the second sentence,' that they don't
 expand any more, so I find it sometimes a bit limiting. (Teacher
 interview, visit 8).

For example, Student P needed to check the 'details' of his story; she said of his character that 'one minute he went to Jupiter and the next thing he's going to Mars'. She felt that Student P's story included description but that he needed to tell her what happened to the character while he was on the planet. Thus she was putting emphasis on the event sequence in the narrative. She also valued 'good ideas' (Teacher interview, visit 8). Even the normally good students she felt could not all do narrative 'properly' yet. However, she believed that some of the students were competent in this genre. (Teacher interviews, visits 5 and 6.)

The following discussion will exemplify some of the textual features found in the students' writing, to identify what is valued by the teacher and the genre theorists, and what the relationship might be between these two perspectives on the texts. The first three texts shown are those seen as less effective, while the second three were highly valued.

Narratives judged as being less successful

Figure 5 shows a text judged as less successful by the teacher. The writer, Student H, she described as having 'big problems in everything' and as having had a lot of remedial work. When Student H was writing a recount, the teacher helped him with specific elements of the Orientation, including spelling (Observation, visit 1).

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

At the grammatical level this text shows features which would not be considered appropriate to a well-formed genre, although at the level of schematic structure it conforms to the Narrative 'framework', containing as it does a type of projected Complication^Resolution structure. That is to say, the writer has not made the most appropriate choices from the meaning resources available to him in the grammatical system. The switch from past to present to future tense detracts from the text's coherence. The switch of pronouns from 'I' to generic 'you' also appears inconsistent. While changing these linguistic features would not necessarily transform the text into a highly-valued piece of Narrative, they are something which could readily be addressed in a conferencing session which helped the writer understand the reasons for these kinds of choices. In spite of these features the teacher considered this text a good achievement for Student H, whom she identified as one of the least able writers in the class. She was pleased that he could produce a comprehensible text and take it through to a publishable level.

Two other texts judged as less successful by the teacher had some difficulties with the Complication^Resolution structure. Because the Complication is such a crucial part of what is valued in a Narrative, it seems that when it is not effective the Narrative as a whole suffers. Figures 6 and 7 show two texts that were identified as having some Complication problems.

[FIGURES 6-7 OMITTED]

Student T's text contains description, a feature which is often valued in a Narrative, for example: 'My space car is silver. It has strong plastic for its windows. It has a gold ball on its bonnet and a feather on its boot.... Their coats were coloured like a rainbow.' (The pictures are also rather descriptive.) However, the text is lacking in any real Complication. The author implies that something is not right when she writes 'I never want to go back' and more subtly when she mentions her difference to the Martians: 'The people had no clothes in Mars but I wore clothes.' However, she does not include any Event that could function as a crisis in the story. It seems here that the writer is including some features that may be valued in traditional 'story' writing, such as descriptions with adjectives and similes, but may be unaware of the place of some features of the schematic structure.

While Student T's text does not appear to have any Complication, Figure 7 is an example of an attempt at a Narrative which only has a very brief Complication.

One reason why this text was not highly valued by the teacher may be that the Complication is so short that there is no opportunity to create suspense. There is much descriptive (and imaginative) material in the Orientation, which occupies more than half of the text. However, there is only a one-Event Complication: 'The boss came up to me and said, "You are not an Alien."' It has already been mentioned that the teacher valued detail in the Event structure of narratives (Teacher interviews, visits 5 and 6.)

The Resolution also only represents one Event: 'This long neck thing and a big man who had cat whiskers came up and rescued me.' It seems that the student may have put most of his energies into describing the characters, while the Event structure of the story is lacking. It is possible that the emphasis given in the First Steps materials to the Orientation (as seen in the Recount plans described earlier), as well as the fact that these elements come first in the story, may be leading the students to overemphasise them in comparison to the Events.

Student B's text was considered a good effort by the teacher. She saw him as one of the least able writers in the class and often gave him individual assistance with his writing:

 with Student H and Student B I think, 'Oh, OK, they
 need to just work on this little bit here'.
 (Teacher interview, visit 8).

Student B often asked for the teacher's help with punctuation and spelling. From interaction with the researcher it appeared that he was not yet at the phonetic phase of spelling. At one stage he objected to the teacher collecting his writing because he said he had not yet finished (Observation, visit 6).

The teacher was pleased that Student B included the main elements of Narrative structure in his text. Her evaluation of all the children's work was based on what they had previously shown her that they were able to do and she was conscious of the wide range of writing ability in the class. She was also aware that Student B came from difficult family circumstances, did not always get enough sleep and was currently experiencing some behavioural problems. On one occasion he complained that he was hungry in class (Observation, visit 6).

In the above section an attempt has been made to link what is valued (or not valued) by the teacher with what is valued by the genre theorists. While some of what is 'lacking' in these texts can be explained in terms of genre theory, in terms of Student B's text it could be that the formulaic nature of the theory in the form that it is presented in the First Steps materials may be interfering with the student's ability to produce 'successful' texts. He was aware that he needed to include the main elements of Narrative structure in his story and this appeared to take up most of his effort. It is possible that had he been given more freedom he may have been able to produce texts with other valued features, but this remains speculation.

Narratives judged as being more successful

Those texts judged by the teacher as being more successful all have structures through which they achieve the purpose of a Narrative and have other valued features as well. They make up the majority of the 'published' texts. The ones judged to be the most successful Narratives all have a series of Complications and Resolutions. Student N's text (Figure 8) is one such example.

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

Student N was described by the teacher as 'bright' and as one of the best writers in the class.

Two Complications can be identified in this text. The first one is: 'I saw an Alien It had one eye, two feelers and three legs. I touched it and it bit me.' This is quickly resolved: 'So I walked away.' However, the second Complication, 'That night I got kidnapped by two Aliens called Hermas and Jeremiah,' has an extended Resolution making up the rest of the text and providing detail of a series of Events.

Other valued features in this text include a Justification as part of the Orientation: 'because it was a nice summer's day.' There is also some description, even though it is perhaps not particularly elegantly expressed: 'The rocket was pink with blue stripes on it.... The planet was pink, blue and purple. It had a ring around it. The ring was red.'

The features mentioned above may help explain why the Student N was seen, especially by her peers, as a 'good' writer, although she told the researcher that she did not like writing. When she did write, her preference was for 'true stories'. Her grandmother also wrote stories (interview, visit 9).

The last two texts discussed here are from students whom the teacher regarded as the most able writers in the class. The stories both have a multiple Complication^Resolution structure. The teacher also valued the 'good ideas' in these two stories (interview, visit 8).

Student S's text (Figure 9) is presented first. Student S spoke Macedonian as well as English. At home her parents spoke Macedonian to their four daughters, although the girls sometimes answered their parents in English and spoke English amongst themselves. The three other girls could write Macedonian, but Student S said she could only write one word: 'Mum'. She was not sure whether she considered herself a good writer.

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

The text has an unusual, casual-sounding Orientation: 'One morning when I was living on Mercury ...' It then builds up tension through a series of Complications and use of dialogue:

Complication 1: 'Something started to pull my hair. I realised that the witch was there.'

Complication 2: 'Then the (g)old started to melt. An old girl jumped out. Nicole started to scream. "She's a witch."'

Complication 3: 'The witch started to follow us. She had a crystal ball in her hand. "Wait. Wait. I want you to have this ball so you will never forget me."'

Complication 4: 'Then someone came into our room and he took me, Niki, Nicole, Sophie, Uelinda and Biljana.'

Complication 5: 'When they came up to a tall tree they saw me tied up to the tree. A man was hitting me.'

Each of these Complications is resolved, although the last Resolution is not particularly dramatic: 'The man went to bed. Niki and Nicole untied me ...'. The text was highly-valued by the girls whose names are mentioned in it and clearly had a function of reinforcing their peer-group cohesion. It is likely that the generic structure influenced the teacher's positive evaluation.

The final text presented here (Figure 10) is from Student BT, who the teacher considers to be clearly the 'best' writer in the class. She was a very talented student who was also able to assist her older brother with his Mathematics homework. The teacher described her as having 'taken off' with her writing (interview, visit 8). Student BT told the researcher that she liked writing, especially 'pirate stories', 'bush stories' and 'other sorts of stories', and that she also liked reading and had a lot of pirate stories at home (interview, visit 9). She seemed to have a good grasp of the mechanics of writing and was observed writing in the air to check her spelling (visit 2). She wrote lengthy texts and sometimes wanted to keep going when the others had finished. She was proud of the quantity of writing she produced.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

Similarly to the previous text, Student BT's text has a casual-sounding Orientation which seems to add credibility to the Narrative: 'My friend who lives in Pluto invited me to dinner.' Again the text has a series of Complications:

Complication 1: '".. when I got to Pluto she wasn't there. There was only a note. It said, "I've been kidnapped by a horrible alien. He has hidden me in the dungeon in Mars."'

Complication 2: 'I went over there. But I couldn't get in because there was an alien guarding the house.'

Complication 3: 'Then E.T. locked me up too. Nicole was the prisoner. I said to her, "How can we get out of this dungeon?"'

Complication 4: 'Me and Nicole escaped, but we didn't get rid of E.T. We had to think of a plan to get E.T. to jail.'

Each Complication has a Resolution. There is a reasonable degree of repetition in the Events, however the tension in the story is still maintained until the final Resolution. There are some problems with tense in the middle of the Narrative: 'I had an idea. I will throw the shovel out the window and he would hear the noise and come near the window. Then we can escape.' So there is some room for development in the text but its schematic structure is certainly very well-formed. The Coda is designed to match the Orientation and includes the use of irony: 'Finally we went back to Pluto and had dinner. I said, "You're a good cook."'

Given that this was the longest of these texts and the most valued by the teacher, it was interesting to observe some of the difficulties Student BT encountered while creating it. The following is an excerpt from the conversation that took part in her group:

Boy*: Is this your good copy?

BT: [nods]

Boy: Then where's your bad copy?

BT: I won't have space there for a picture, will I?

Boy: I will.

Boy: Are you gonna do it up to there?

BT: Probably.

Boy: Is that all your/you're writing?

BT: Yes, but ! haven't finished. [She tells them twice more that she hasn't finished.]

P: You've got a good imagination. I can't imagine as much. Can you, R?

R: No.

P: Can you, H?

* It is not possible to distinguish the different male students speaking here. [Writing is interrupted for a while as Student H suggests a game where one person says 'Ready Set Go' and the first person to put their hands on their head wins.]

This extract gives an idea of the context in which the students produced their writing and some of the things which are valued by them. Student BT was working in a group of boys, some of whom were seen by the teacher as poor writers. She put up with a certain amount of verbal teasing and hair-pulling from them, but managed to hold her ground. This was distracting for her but did not interfere with her ability to produce excellent texts.

In the extract above the students discuss the writing process, the amount of space on the page the writing takes up, and the possibility of including a picture. They are slightly mocking of aspects of the process ('good copy') and some of the qualities that are valued by the teacher ('imagination'). At the same time they recognise Student BT as a 'good' writer and named her when the researcher asked them who were the talented writers in the class.

Conclusions

The above has simply been a description of some of the events occurring in one writing classroom and some of the aspects of writing which were valued by the teacher and the students. An attempt has been made to show how some ideas from genre theory have 'trickled down' into this classroom, to the extent that they can be identified in the students' texts, in the way the teacher sets up the text construction and in her views about writing as expressed to the researcher. Of course, it is not possible to say definitively whether features of the children's texts are influenced by genre theory as it is presented in the First Steps materials. However, the observations in the classroom and interview data did illustrate that the teacher made significant use of these materials. This case study raises several areas of concern regarding genre theory and classroom practice:

* It seems, from both this case and other observations of the researcher, that, at least in Western Australia, the 'frameworks' (schematic structures) of the genres have been most whole-heartedly taken on board, rather than the social functions and, especially, the language features of the genres. This emphasis on generic structure rather than language features is a challenge for those of us who wish to help students become aware of the full range of meaning resources available to them in their writing.

* There may be a danger of the genres becoming 'fossilised', partly as a result of the success of the First Steps materials. The widespread use of the 'plans' may add to this phenomenon. Great resistance was encountered from inservice teachers when the researcher attempted to introduce the idea that there may be other genres apart from the six mentioned in the Writing Resource Book, even though the Resource Book itself states that, 'there are many forms of writing' (1997g:6).

* Procedural aspects of writing seemed very important in this case, especially to the students. 'Filling in the boxes' seemed to sometimes become a goal in itself.

* In this particular classroom, Narrative was given major importance. From discussions with other primary school teachers, it appears that Narrative is still very highly valued and that much time is spent on it in class. For example, nationwide literacy tests at the time of this study, conducted on students the same age as those in this sample, assessed their writing by having them compose a narrative. Although the introduction of the First Steps materials in 1991 encouraged a shift in emphasis towards factual genres, it is not clear to what extent this has been implemented.

It is impossible to predict the ways in which a theory will become mediated through curriculum and inservicing materials and how it may be incorporated into classroom practice. An individual teacher certainly does not have responsibility for this. Helping students develop their writing is an enormously complex task, as is working with a class of twenty-one children of differing backgrounds and abilities. In fact, the teacher likened this task to extracting teeth from chickens. It was a privilege to be able to observe her in action.

References

Annandale, K., Bindon, R., Handley, K., Johnston, A., Lockett, L. & Lynch, P. (2004a). Reading Map of Development. (First Steps series). Melbourne: Rigby Heinemann.

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Johns, A.M. (Ed.) (2002) Genre in the Classroom: Multiple Perspectives. London: Erlbaum.

Macken-Horarik, M. (2002) 'Something to Shoot For': A Systemic Functional Approach to Teaching Genre in Secondary School Science. In A. Johns (Ed.) Genre in the Classroom: Multiple Perspectives. London: Erlbaum, 17-42.

Martin, J. (1984). Language, register and genre. In F. Christie (Ed.) Children Writing: Reader. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press, 21-29.

Martin, J. (1997). Analysing genre: functional parameters. In F. Christie & J.

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Notes

A previous version of this paper was published in Writing and Learning to Write at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Proceedings of the 1998 Writing Conference. Universite de Poitiers: LaCo-CNRS

Anne Thwaite

EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY