1. Teaching Writing in a Multilingual
Mainstream Classroom
María Estela Brisk, Boston College
Deborah Nelson, Cheryl O'Connor
Patrick Scialoia, Boston Public Schools
brisk@bc.edu
2. Halliday, M. A. K.
(1994). Theory of Language
Systemic
Functional
Linguistics
Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S.,
Spinks, S., & Yallop, C.
(2000).
Derewianka, B. (1990).
Martin, J. (1992)
Schleppegrell, M. (2004).
3. Meaning Making in Context for Bilinguals
L
CULTURE A A
Context of Situation N F
Register: medium G. F
Field, tenor, mode Genre
E
C C
H T
O
Lexical & Grammatical I
C
Phonology Gestures Graphology
E
TEXT
5. Personal Recount Fictional Narrative
Context of Situation Context of Situation
- High stakes test Produce book in
- show off school
- language knowledge What do novelist
- Ability to write a do?
coherent text Research a topic
6. REGISTER
Field: Topic
Purpose:
Ideational function
Genre
Tenor: audience -
writer;
Voice,identity
Interpersonal function
Medium:
Letter
poem
Mode: Book
Oral/ written
Multimodal Power point
Textual function
8. Field /topic
• Knowledge of the topic
• Language to express knowledge:
– Vocabulary
– Sentence structure
– Noun groups
– Verb groups
– Adverbials/circumstances
– Grammatical morphemes (L2 learners)
9. Vocabulary related to genre
Procedure, action verbs.
• Put pork meat into boiling water until
well cooked.
• Put shrimp into boiling water until well
cooked.
• Put the bread in the toaster
Fictional narrative, saying verbs.
• My mom said…. They said…. Hector
said
10. Sentence Structure
Combine sentences
• Jaguars live in alot of places. They live in
wet lowlands areas, swampy grasslands.
Break up and complete sentences
After the penguins we saw, the sea turtles
which was something wrong with it, five
employees came to see what happed, I was
in atonishment!
11. Verbs Groups
– omitting the s in 3rd person singular Also it weigh[s]
100 pounds.
– past tense, either omitting -ed or irregular past: they
were not use[d] to. I brang a jug [brought] OR
irregular + ed: we haded
– auxiliary to do for negation and questions
– person – verb tense agreement There was [were] two
special clouds
– past participle: if you haven’t went[gone] to Santo
Domingo
12. Noun groups
article
adjective Head 2
Head 1
• Roar! [The loud cry /of a lion/ rubbing
against trees.]
Adjectival phrases
apposition
13. Nouns Groups
– formation of plural childs or childrens
– omitting the subject pronoun If we have to go to
school [it]is better
– possessive: the teachers[teacher’s] foult I is
gonna be yours [your] falut
– under or overuse of the and a: we started to
cook the rice (the not needed, she hadn’t
mention rice before)
– prepositions: they have the most butiful beaches
and[in] the world
14. Adverbials: He came.
When?
He came yesterday.
How?
Yesterday he came angry.
Where? Yesterday he came home angry.
With whom?
Yesterday he came home angry with his friend.
Why? He came because he wanted to see you.
15. REGISTER
Field: Topic
Ideational function
Tenor: audience -
writer;
Voice,identity
Interpersonal function
16. Tenor
• Audience
– Relative relationship between writer
and audience
– Awareness of audience background
knowledge
• Voice
– Appropriate for the genre
– Person
– identity
17. REGISTER
Field: Topic
Ideational function
Tenor: audience -
writer;
Voice,identity
Interpersonal function
Mode:
Oral/ written
Multimodal
Textual function
18. Mode
• Oral, written, multimodal text
• Organization:
– Text structure given the genre
– Text structure given the medium
• Connecting devises:
– Theme
– Reference ties
– Lexical ties
– Rhetorical links
• Requirements of written language:
– Spelling
– conventions
19. REGISTER
Field: Topic
Ideational function
Tenor: audience -
writer;
Voice,identity
Interpersonal function
Medium:
Letter
poem
Mode: Book
Oral/ written
Multimodal Power point
Textual function
20. Medium
• Letters
• Books: Picture, content area; chapter
• Dioramas
• poems
• Magazines
• Power points
21. REGISTER
Field: Topic
Purpose:
Ideational function
Genre
Tenor: audience -
writer;
Voice,identity
Interpersonal function
Medium:
Letter
poem
Mode: Book
Oral/ written
Multimodal Power point
Textual function
22. Purpose: Genres of School
• Story Telling
• Recount (personal, factual, imaginative)
• Historical recount experiential
• Procedural recount (science, math) (chronological)
• Fictional Narrative
• Giving Instructions
• Procedure (Scientific Procedure)
• Organizing Information
• Report (scientific, social science,
research report)
• Explanation (scientific, historical)
• Persuading logical
• Exposition
• Discussion
• Historical, scientific argument
23. Genre: Fictional
Narrative
Genre: Personal Recount
Purpose: to entertain, to
Purpose: to entertain teach something
Field: unexpected
Field: animal research for
Tenor: a central character
- Audience: outside Tenor: Audience: students
evaluator in lower grades/peers
- Voice: expert writer Voice: entertaining
Mode: should be written Mode: written language
language like like, avoid excessive
Medium: how to write to a dialogue
prompt Medium: a book
24. Genre “comparable texts which achieve the same
general social purpose, and which therefore draw
on the same relatively stable structural
pattern” (Butt et al p. 214)
Purpose
GENRE
Structural organization of text
25. Orientation Orientation
Who, where, when, what Who, where, when, what
Foregrounding
Sequence of Events
Sequence of Events (including complication,
crisis)
Resolution
Ending
Last event
Conclusion
Evaluation, feelings [optional or particular to a type of
narrative, e.g. moral]
28. MCAS Writing Prompts
• Write a story about a special time that
you spent with your favorite person.
• Write a story about when you did
something for the first time.
• Write a story about a fun time that you
had doing your favorite thing.
• Write a story about a time you were
helpful.
29. Bilingual Learners
Knowledge of Topic
• MCAS prompt: write a story about what
you did when you had a snow day
• Yay! It,s snowing and it,s Christmas day
that means there is no school.
30. Minilessons (cont.)
• Making up/embellishing when stuck on a
question
• Showing not telling
• Transitional phrases
• Conclusions
• Scoring rubrics (looking at their own work
as well as others) – understanding scoring
system, trying to improve their own score
31. Mentor Texts
• Big Mama’s by Donald Crews
• The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant
• When I Was Young in the Mountains by
Cynthia Rylant
• What You Knew First by Patricia MacLachlan
• Mint Snowbell by Naomi Shihab Nye
• Grandmama’s Kitchen Table by Cynthia Rylant
• Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe
33. Minilessons
• Phase I:
– Researching an animal (character)from a
scientific standpoint (graphic organizer for
notetaking in packet)
34. animal
Habitat What does it eat?
Behaviors (nocturnal) Predators
Continent where
the are found
Other questions I have researched
_Q:__________________________
_A:___________________________
35. Minilessons
Phase II:
• Planning using graphic organizers (in
packet)
• Audience
• Point of view/perspective
• Setting (how it affects character
development)
• Character development (character
traits, character change, how do authors
reveal character personalities?)
38. Transitional Phrases
• To trigger addition: – Finally • To trigger a
– Additionally – First relationship
– Besides – In the meantime – Because
– Furthermore • To trigger summary: – Consequently
– In addition – Likewise
– As a result
• To trigger example: – Nonetheless
– For example – In conclusion
– In summary – Similarly
– For instance
– Thus – To sum up
– In other words • To trigger a
• To trigger emphasis:• To trigger granting a generalization:
– Above all point: – All in all
– Certainly – At any rate – In general
– Of course – Even so – Typically
– Surely – In any case – Usually
• To trigger – Nonetheless
sequence:
– Afterward
39. Mentor Texts
• Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco
• The Old Woman who Named Things by Cynthia
Rylant
• In My Own Backyard by Judy Curijan
• Hurricane by David Weisner
• The Mitten by Jan Brett
• Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett
• Buffalo Hunt by Russell Freedman
• The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon
Scieszka
• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
40. Structural Elements
• Orientation
– Who, where, when, what
– Foregrounding
• Sequence of Events (including
complication crisis)
• Resolution
• Conclusion
– Optional or particular to a type of narrative
(e.g. moral)
41. Orientation
Henry the Hyena was a mean, rude,
bullying and picky hyena. Every
morning he wakes up at 8:30 in the
morning fresh as a daisy and goes to
a banana tree to hang out with his
friends. While their [there] at the
banana tree miguel the monkey
comes to the tree to get a banana.
42. Sequence of Events
• Once Henry the Hyena sees miguel getting a banana
Henry just starts hurting miguel just to see him hurt, after
all seeing people in pain is what he likes to see
• The next morning Henry and the rest of his hyena friends
went to a different banana tree because today was the big
banana contest and in this contest the first monkey to find
the biggest banana wins the lake for a week…
• Henry snatched the big banana and broke it in half.
“That’s it!” shouted miguel angrily. “I wish that you were a
monkey so you will know how it feels to be picked on.”
• The next morning Henry woke up and saw that he had
brown fur and saw that he was shorter so he went to the
mirror. “Ahhh”!, shouted Henry. “It must’ve been when
miguel the monkey said he wished I was a monkey which
made in one.”
……
43. Resolution
• He walked to miguel’s house and started
talking “Look miguel, I’m sorry for the way I was
treating you , and you had to be mad at me and
yes I now know it feels to be picked on. Look if
you can forgive me and we can be friends that
would be great.” “Apollogy accepted” replied
miguel. “Great” said Henry.
• The next day Henry saw that he was back to
normal . So was miguel. They both got to the
banana tree at the same time. There was no
teazing which meant everyone was friends.
44. Why is SFL good to
inform instruction for
bilingual learners?
• It helps uncover explicitly how English
works
• It takes into account language and
cultural context
• It is good for bilingual learners and for
all students
45. • Bilingual learners “can no longer be
thought of as a group apart form the
mainstream- in today’s culturally and
linguistically diverse classrooms, they
are the mainstream” (Gibbons, 2002, p. 13)
