Effective modelling - by which I mean showing students how to write well - empowers by enabling application of knowledge, articulacy, and the expression of complex ideas. It’s also deceptively complex, it seems to me, and therefore a highly-skilled element of classroom practice. Here is an outline for a possible way to go about it. Many of us are sceptical about highly-prescribed processes, because they can appear mechanistic and lack an appreciation of context. The below is of course only one strategy and many others are possible. My focus here is on using pre-prepared paragraph models, written in advance and shared with students in completed form. Live modelling has advantages but also limitations: I've often found that spontaneously writing a focused and clear model paragraph, whilst simultaneously managing a full classroom of teenagers, is tricky and can easily result in confusing writing. Pre-prepared models, however, can be precisely tailored and tweaked to ensur...
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