Guided writing involves a teacher working with a group of students on a writing task. Guided writing allows teachers to provide high levels of immediate, targeted support and aims to support learners in psychologically and cognitively strenuous activities. Let us have a look at some of the methods used in guided written activities below.
Gap-fill sentences:
This is an activity where students fill in some of the missing words in the incomplete sentences by themselves. Example:
- I have two sisters and____ like going _____school
Students do not need much active language production for fill-in exercises since most of the language is provided, but they need understanding. Younger students who have advanced to a higher level can focus on specific language items, like question forms or prepositions.
The teacher can ask students to finish each sentence before they start working on the following sentence, which inspires quick writing. This type of exercise is a useful starting point for discussion in the prewriting stage of free writing. This could be used as the starting point for freewriting on ‘What I like doing best.’
Letters/cards/invitations
Writing letters, cards, or invitations seems to be a favourite language class exercise. It is indeed a valuable way of getting students to write a brief, meaningful piece of writing. Ideally, letters are written to be sent, but teachers can have learners write to each other and post their messages through the classroom postman.