A New Way to Look at Expository Writing

Welcome Back to Another Writing Adventure. 

On our last trip, we boarded the writing train and explored the exciting genre of Narrative Writing.

In our class sessions this week, we continued the journey to learn more about the skills and techniques of another very important and exciting genre that must be passed on to our students to make them successful writers. This is  a very powerful genre of which I speak, as it integrates language arts into all  content areas at every grade level from pre-school to university. In this blog, I will share with you  some  skills and techniques, some we are familiar with and some new that helped to further enhance my knowledge and skills  as a writing teacher. So off we go on our journey.

What is Expository Writing?

 The author of the text: Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product defines expository writing as "used to explain a something, provide instruction or present information."

I learnt also that it also describes a process. However this describing must no be confused with the genre of descriptive writing itself.

This is the type of writing (expository), the  author explains is one that 'students use when they write reports to share something they learned, and essays to describe something, compare two things, explain a change using cause and effects or specify how to make or do something.'

Expository text are mostly factual and lends itself to non-fiction writing as outlined above. It is generally about real people, things, events, locations etc.

In writing expository text writers:

👉 focus on a single topic.

👉 apply expository text structures to organize their writing and cue words to guide readers.

👉 introduce the topic, state the focus and grab the reader's attention in the first paragraph.

👉 present information, using topic sentences, supporting facts and specific details in the middle paragraphs.

👉 insert smooth transitions between paragraphs or sections.

👉 sum up their ideas and make a final comment about the topic in the conclusion.

👉 use nonfiction features and reader-friendly formatting to guide readers.

their writing follows the following format of 

👀 Introduction  

👀 Body

👀 Conclusion

What are the text structures and features of expository writin

In teaching our students expository writing they will be exposed through reading, to certain text structures. They in-turn must learn how to implement these structures in their own writing. The image below outlines these text structures and some cue words or 'secret codes' that hints the structure. There is also an example of a graphic organizer that can be used to help the writers to outline their ideas for writing. It is important to note here that these graphic organizers play a very critical role in students' writing development and should be used.

As mentioned above, expository writing is merely non-fiction. Hence, as our students read such texts they will come across certain features that are unique to non-fiction writing, that they will eventually use as they become more skilled at this writing.

Such features include:

👉 a table of contents to show how the text is organized

👉 heading and sub-headings to direct the reader's attention

👉 photographs and realistic drawings to illustrate big ideas

👉 figures, maps, tables and charts to present detailed information visually

👉margin notes to provide supplemental information

👉bold print to highlight technical vocabulary words

👉a glossary to assist readers in promoting and defining words

👉an index to assist readers in locating specific information

What are some types of Expository Writing? 

Expository writing can be taught as early as kindergarten or even in pre-schools, as young students engage in many non-narrative compositions as they share how to do or make something such as getting ready for school, or making cookies etc. 

Some of the different types of expository writing we can engage our students in are :

 

All About ....Books - young students can create booklets about something they read or learnt about. e.g. All about Cats. In these books, text can be accompanied by drawings.

Collaborative Reports - students work in small groups or along with the teacher to compose reports on some thing they were reading. 

Individual Reports - students are given opportunities to write reports on things that interest them or answers to puzzles or problems. 

Alphabet Books - they can create a book sequenced alphabetically listing something they want to share. e.g.  Things around My Home from A-Z. 

Essays - students write to explain and analyze information based on a personal experiences or about an issue plaguing society on a national or international level.

How do we teach Expository Writing and what  are the techniques involved?

In introducing expository writing to our students they must first be exposed to and engaged in reading and assessing a variety of non-fiction text. As in all other genres of writing, these will be their mentor or model for their own writing. Some of such text may include, informational books, guidebooks, essays biographies.

 

Once they are familiar with expository text and what it entails they should be given the opportunity to practice. It is always important to remember, that they must be given adequate time and positive feedback on their progress through every writing experience.

Here are some guideline that we as teachers need to use to help our students develop skills with expository writing.

1. Teach the genre - students must be taught how to identify an expository text different to text of the other genre cue words or 

2. Link the reading and Writing - students need to be do read a lot of non-fiction books and learn about its characteristics and features which they in-turn should be taught to use in their own writing.

3. Address plagiarism - students need to be aware of what plagiarism is should be taught how to avoid engaging in it.

Often this act of plagiarism is committed by weak or struggling readers who lack the knowledge and skills of composing a good expository piece. Writers who run out of time during writing may also opt to using someone else's work in part or whole . It is important for teachers to recognize and address these issues to hinder future reoccurrences. This can be done during writing workshops in a series of mini-lessons, by guiding students through the writing process and monitoring their progress every step of the way. Also ensure that they submit their rough notes, outlines and organizers with their published work as proof of them being the author of the work presented. 

Graphic organizers and outlines serve as techniques that we can teach our students to use, to help them with expository text. Again it must be used that they are necessary and of vital use. Such can include:

T-CHARTS                                                                        VENN DIAGRAM

Essay Outline

   POCKET CHARTS and DATA CHARTS, 

In this day and age when the use of technology in learning is vastly growing, there lies many opportunities and options for teachers to incorporate such in the teaching of writing as like every other content area. PowerPoint, Animoto and more present day apps such as Picktocharts and Google slides are some of such forms of technology we can use with  our students to enhance their writing experience and presentations.

What about Assessing Expository Writing? 

As like the other genres, checklist and rubrics play an integral role in assessing student's writing. They must be presented with the requirements of such before they begin to write so that they are aware of what is expected, and also they serve as a guiding tool. As students complete aspects of the writing task, they can check them off on their list. When the entire is completed, they submit their checklists with their writing and organizers etc. This should in turn be followed by timely and positive feedback. 

This review of information on expository writing is quite helpful and a welcomed reminder of the purpose and need to teach our students this skill. Myself as  a teacher struggle most with this genre of writing especially when writing on general issues and this is because I often lack knowledge of the subject. I hardly read non-fiction text and this poses a challenge to write non-fiction text. So is the same for our students when they write. They are exposed to too much fictional text. We also give them topics to write about and they hardly have been exposed to any material on it and this can make the task very hard. 

As was taught in another course, expository writing  should and can be incorporated across the curriculum, integrating language arts with all other the other content areas. As a result, this type of writing to has the most opportunity to be taught and practiced. 

I recommend that in our classrooms, our libraries be filled with more expository text that students can read and our anchor texts for our language arts lessons be based on something that  was or will be taught in another content area at that particular time, to support and promote integration. This I believe will make it easier and provide more ways for our students to learn the skills involved in it. This, coupled with the use of graphic organizers, will make them better at writing expository texts.