How to Teach a Text

1. RECOUNT

General Features

Social Purpose

Recounts ‘tell what happened’. The purpose of a factual recount is to document a series of events and evaluate their significance in some way. The purpose of the literary or story recount is to tell a sequence of events so that it entertains. The story recount has expressions of attitude and feeling, usually made by the narrator about the events.

Structure

Recounts are organised to include:

✒ an orientation providing information about ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘when’;

✒ a record of events usually recounted in chronological order;

✒ personal comments and/or evaluative remarks that are interspersed throughout the record of events;

 ✒ reorientation that ‘rounds off’ the sequence of events.

Grammar

Common grammatical patterns of a recount include:

✒ use of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals or things involved;

 ✒ use of action verbs to refer to events;

✒ use of past tense to locate events in relation to speaker’s or writer’s time;

✒ use of conjunctions and time connectives to sequence the events;

✒ use of adverbs and adverbial phrases to indicate place and time;

✒ use of adjectives to describe nouns

Teaching Notes: Stage 1

Students’ personal experiences and class experiences, such as shared reading of picture book recounts, provide ideal content for students’ recounts. Students can give oral recounts of personal experience and jointly construct retellings of shared picture book recounts. Many teachers in Early Stage 1 use news telling as a context for oral recounts. It is important to scaffold children’s language use to ensure there is a sequence of events in their recounts

Structure

Students should focus on sequencing events accurately.

Content

Students can draw on familiar experiences, including picture book recounts.

Links with Other Key Learning Areas

Recounts can be related to any activity or learning experience that involves recounting a sequence of events, eg visit to the Zoo, events or features on a neighbourhood walk, playing a computer game.

Grammar Focus

✒ In joint construction activities, focus on including ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ in the orientation and using joining words to sequence events.

✒ In students’ oral recounts, draw the students’ attention to the need to use the past tense if necessary.

✒ Draw attention to the use of adjectives in building description.

Grammar Terminology

Students at this stage will be using terms such as:

✒ statement;

✒ ‘when’ words;

✒ ‘where’ words;

✒ name;

✒ ‘in the past’;

✒ joining words.

Spoken Recounts

Spoken recounts of personal experience often need teacher support. They can be scaffolded by the teacher’s comments and questions that assist students to sequence events and give information about when and where the events took place. Shared class experiences can be scaffolded by photographs and pictures that help students to select a sequence of events. Retellings of picture book recounts can be scaffolded by the book illustrations as well as the teacher’s questions.

Written Recounts

Picture book recounts provide models of story recounts for students. They can be used to focus on the sequencing of events and telling the events in time and place. Written recounts can be jointly constructed by the teacher and the class, with the teacher encouraging students to use words and phrases that put the events in time and place, eg yesterday, last week, to the zoo, at the library.

Jointly constructed recounts may provide additional models after reading a written recount. Independently written recounts at this stage are likely to deal with one or two events only.

to be continued