Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes – Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge - What do students already know about echidnas? How can we categorise this information?

10 minutes – Part B: Read and Reflect - Read the text about echidnas. Discuss how poorly the information is arranged, as a jumble of facts, and how it can be edited to be better.

25 minutes – Part C: Editing (Independent Work) - Students re-write the text to be more coherent, using their editing skills.

5 minutes – Part D: Reflection

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Step 1.

Begin by asking students what they already know about echidnas.

As students offer up facts, ask; "What kind of a fact is this? Is this a diet fact? Is it a fact about echidna's physical appearance?"

Keep a list of these categories on the board.

Part B: Read and Reflect

Step 1.

As a class, read through the Echidna Information Text.

Step 2.

What do students notice about the information contained in this text?

While it was very informative, it seemed to be all jumbled up.

Step 3.

What categories did the information fall under?

Categorising facts in information texts and ordering your writing with sub-headings and paragraphs makes the text easier to read because the sub-headings guide the reader through the information, and all of the same sort of information is in the same place.

Look back on the list of categories you've already created. Hopefully you've covered:

Physical appearance
Habitat
Diet
Offspring/babies/young/mating
Fun facts

Step 4.

Using your coloured pens or highlighters, work through the text again, colour-coding each fact according to your categories.

For example, every fact in the text about echidna babies you might highlight in yellow.

This will give you a great visual of how poorly the information is organised in this information text, and lead you towards a solution for editing it to a better read.

Part C: Editing (Independent Work)

Step 1.

Independently, students colour-code their own worksheets.

Step 2.

Then, students re-write the information in their workbooks under the categories.

Learning Support - Provide students with the Scaffolded Categories Worksheet. Students can cut out the facts, group them together, and paste them onto the Worksheet in a rearranged order.

Extension - You'll notice that, when rearranged, still doesn't quite read smoothly. The sentences are very staccato, repeating the word echidna too much. The next level of editing would be to look at conjunctions and synonyms to make the writing flow more easily.

For example:

Echidnas range from 35 to 52cm in length. Echidnas can weigh up to 6 kg. Female echidnas are usually smaller than males. Each spine of the echidna is formed from a single hair. Echidna’s spines can reach up to 50 mm in length.

becomes:

Echidnas range from 35 to 52cm in length, and they can weigh up to 6 kg, though the females are usually smaller than the males. Each spine of the echidna is formed from a single hair, and they can grow up to 50 mm in length.

Part D: Reflection

Step 1.

Read a student's work, complete with categories. Does it read better?

Step 2.

Ask students to reflect on why we use categories and sub-headings in information texts: to make the text easier to read as the sub-headings guide the reader through the information, and all of the same sort of information is in the same place.

Where to next?

Repeat this lesson using the Platypus Information Text to solidify student learning, perhaps with less scaffolding through the worked example this time.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Editing Information Texts

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Summary

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