In “Enjoy English 2” (m.Biboletova et al) we come across the following activity:

Заполни таблицу названиями месяцев:

Days	Months
31 days
30 days
28 or 29 days

A picture of a calendar with names of months

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Apart from practising copying children have to find information which adds to their overall knowledge of the world.

Here is another example of a copying activity taken from the young learners’ course book “Millie 2”:

Complete the sentences about the robot. Then draw it. Закончи предложения о роботе. Нарисуй его.

This is my robot. It’s got 1____________2 ___________. It can 3_________________________. It’s got 1___________ 2___________ . It can 3_________________________ . It likes 4_________________________ .				[AW An empty frame for drawing a robot // рамочка для рисования робота с заглавием My Robot ]
1 long short big small	2 legs arms hands feet	3 cook swim clean the room walk jump	4 roller-skating dancing ice-cream music English books

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This exercise allows for developing simple copying skills, reading comprehension and stimulates child’s creativity.

In Guided activities pupils are given the opportunity to make decisions about what to write, but they still need support (see Chapter 1 about scaffolding). You may try various types of support: pictures, tables, unfinished or jumbled sentences, gapped stories, questions, key words, etc. Controlled and guided activities go hand in hand as they develop accurate and meaningful writing and form a basis for developing competent writing skills. Look at the activity taken from the course book “Millie 3”:

Look at the picture. Then complete the Lost Pet notice. Посмотри на рисунок. Заполни объявление о пропаже питомца.

A picture of a dog

Lost Pet

Please help us find __________. His name’s _____________.

Description:

Eyes -________, nose -____________, ears -_____________,

hair-_________, legs-___________, arms_____________.

Robby can _________________________________________

He likes____________________________________________

If you know where he is, please call me on

tel. no. ________________. Ask for_____________.

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By appealing to the child’s emotions the activity develops imagination and teaches meaningful writing. As the picture gives only partial support young learners have the opportunity to express themselves while making their choice.

We would like to add one more example of guided writing:

Complete the invitation. Заполни приглашение:

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When you organise an English Party you might ask your pupils to write an invitation card for their parents and friends. Thus, there is the real need for written communication. It also teaches etiquette and gives children opportunity to express themselves in a creative way (to add drawings, to glue pictures, etc see also Chapter 11 about organising a Writing Corner)

• Free writing.

Controlled and guided writing tasks often prepare children for free writing. Free writing is usually described as the type of writing that pupils carry out without any support. As was mentioned in the beginning of the chapter free writing is a complex skill, so it is too ambitious to expect young learners to be able to write without any support, so you will find only a few free activities like writing compositions, stories in primary course books.

You might want to engage your pupils in this challenging activity from our practice:

Wow! You’ve got e-mail from your best friend! OOPS! What a mess! It’s all mixed up! Try to read it and write back.

[A picture of a computer with the text of e-mail inside:] Hi, Natasha! I’m Tracy! 10 I’m. I’m UK from the. I like and reading books playing friend with my Steve. We’d like penpals to find countries from different. Write, please. back Love, Tracy.

[A picture of a computer with empty screen]

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As the situation is close to real life pupils are eagerly involved. The letter the pupils are supposed to restore serves as a model for writing e-mails and illustrates one more genre of writing.

Dictations

We would like to devote a separate section to dictations as they are widely used as a means for practising and testing spelling. They are also usually associated with fear, irritation, and panic. We believe that dictation can be easily turned into an enjoyable activity (either controlled or guided).

Try out a mutual dictation:

“Mutual dictation” Suggested procedure: Choose a short story or a dialogue. Divide each sentence into two parts. Write each half of the sentences on a separate strip of paper. Give pupil 1 the beginnings, pupils 2 – the endings. In pairs pupils dictate bits of sentences to each other writing the complete sentences in their exercise-books. Thus, pupils get the whole text. This activity can be exploited further: Ask children to rearrange sentences in the logical order, read and mime the situation, check each other’s work in terms of spelling.

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This simple activity has rich potential for developing listening and reading skills, cooperation, and peer-evaluation. It can also be followed up by speaking (acting out the dialogue).