expressive writing
 : A Tale of Two Donkeys
Approach: Station
732k
Resources: Title page and 6 picture pages, (in order shown at right), stapler.

Questions / instructions:
There are 6 pictures that tell a story and a title page.
Imagine that you are writing a book for a young person to really enjoy.

  1. Put the pictures into an order that tells a story.
  2. Put a page number on each picture to show the order.
  3. Write the story in the spaces under the pictures.
  4. When you have finished, put the pages in order with the title page on top, and staple them together.
Correct Image Sequence
1,2,3,
4,5,6
press on image for enlarged version
123
456
  % responses
y8

Text related to picture:

always
sometimes
rarely/never

89
9
2

Logical flow:

excellent
very good
good
poor

54
34
10
2

Plot development:

excellent
very good
good
poor

47
39
11
3

Interest: eg. humour, tragedy, moral

very high
quite high
some
little or none

32
49
15
4

Overall score:

9–11
6–8
3–5
0–2

59
29
10
2

Commentary:
Only twelve percent of year 8 students did not manage quite a good story. Fifty-nine percent produced a very good story, about 20 percent more than year 4 students achieved on the simpler parallel task, Birthday Story.


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