Recount, dictionary
(2 weeks)

This unit is the third in a block of five non-fiction units in Year 1. It can be purposefully linked to other areas of the curriculum. The unit has three phases, with oral or written outcomes and assessment opportunities at regular intervals. It is important that children learn to orally rehearse recounts in the past tense and use some time connectives to support chronology. Dictionaries are used in phase 3 with the teacher modelling how to use alphabetical ordering to look up words and reinforce learning. The unit is designed to follow on from Year 1 Non-fiction unit 2: Instructions, which gives children experience of ordering and sentence structure.

Phase 1

The teacher models orally a recount of a visit or an event using such phrases as last week, then and after that. Children are given plenty of opportunities to ask the teacher questions about what the teacher has remembered.

Phase 2

The teacher and children analyse the activity orally and children practise with their response partners a recount of the same event or visit. The teacher and children listen to each other's recounts and make a series of pictures or a simple time line to order events. This could be modelled using digital photographs on an interactive whiteboard (IWB). The teacher demonstrates how to write a simple recount and edits and scribes as children volunteer suggestions.

Phase 3

Read the recount written by children and the teacher, discuss, identify and record language features. Use this as a lead into Developing early writing, Ref: 0055/2001, Year 1 unit 9: The day the fire engine came to school http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/publications/literacy/63337/ or any event in school experienced by children. Children talk about an actual event, including generating questions and ordering events with the support of photographs or pictures. The teacher scribes and supports composition. Children work in groups or pairs to make their own simple recount in sentences using the past tense and time connectives.

Dictionary work will be ongoing throughout phase 3 with the teacher demonstrating effective use of the dictionary.

Overview

• Children describe incidents from their own experience in an audible voice using sequencing words and phrases such as 'then', 'after that'. Some children will find it easier to describe an incident if they have first drawn some pictures showing the series of events. Model listening to a recount and asking questions to prompt extending the recount or providing more detail. Children then listen to one another's recounts and ask relevant questions to provide detailed information or extend the recount. Model writing a short recount of a personal incident in the home. (Something commonplace such as the baby smearing his food all over his face and the furniture or the dog tearing up the unread newspaper will nudge the children to think up equivalent experiences of their own.) Children write simple first-person recounts linked to personal experience.
• Play games to introduce the use of the alphabet to order items in a dictionary or encyclopaedia.
• Write extended captions for a class display. Read captions, pictures and diagrams on wall displays that explain a process. Draw pictures to illustrate a process and use the picture to explain the process orally.

1998 Framework objectives covered:

Year 1, Term 2: T20 use simple dictionaries, and understand their alphabetical organisation; T23 produce extended captions, for example describe artefacts, paintings in wall displays.

Year 1, Term 3: T20 write simple recounts linked to personal experience.