Writing begins with techniques such as how to hold a pencil or pen. From such critical early skills develop the millions of words which surround us. For everyone, it is no easy to write when you do not know who you are writing to or why you are writing. In real life we always have a reason to write and it is usually not “because the teacher told me to.” If however there is an interesting stimulus and a context for creating a text, one can make the task more interesting. We can use a picture to stimulate interest or get students to respond to something they have heard, seen or read about. Writing may be labeling, informing, arguing, describing or story telling but central to all text types, there should be a sense of audience or purpose.
The most immediate way of providing our student writers with a reader is that students act as each other’s audience. Often we neglect the opportunities of group writing approaches. There are opportunities for preparing for writing, writing itself, checking for accuracy and preparing a final copy for display.
