St Teresa

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St Teresas College

• QCS The Writing Task
• Planning

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Plan to succeed!
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QCS Writing Task

• When Paper 1 Tuesday morning
• Duration 2 hours 10min perusal
• Task 600 word written piece (story, essay,
  report, reflection) in response to stimulus
• Contrib. to overall QCS grade 29

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Equipment Allowed

• Pens (BLACK ink)
• Pencil
• Sharper
• Eraser
• Correction Fluid / Liquid Paper

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What do I have to do?

• Respond to stimulus use as inspiration
• Respond in any genre except poetry
• Brainstorm, plan, draft, edit, rewrite to final
  copy standard
• Write one (1) text of about 600 words of
  continuous prose

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Planning to succeed

• A range of rehearsed strategies will underpin
  success
• Time management writing process are vital
• Brainstorming, planning and time allocation

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Writers block? You can plan your way out of it!
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General feedback from mighty minds

• Penalties occur when students write below 500 or
  over 750 words. All students should aim for 600
  words. Work out how many words it will take to
  fill your task booklet.

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Writing to page ratios

• The writing booklet has 30 lines per page. A
  guideline of how many pages 600 words occupies,
  based on the number of words per line, is
  outlined below.
• Number of w/p/l Approx pages required
• 6 3 ½
• 7 3
• 8 2 ½
• 9 2 ¼
• 10 2
• 11 1 2/3
• 12 1 1/3

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Plan your paragraphs

• It is important that students set out their
  ideas clearly and express them in planned
  paragraphs.
• Students need to be reminded that it is
  essential their written responses have a strong
  connection to the stimulus material.

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Plan your strategy

• Plan to be familiar with at least two fairly
  different genres. Pick writing styles you have
  gained success with and are confident in and that
  you can complete in the 2 hours of the writing
  task.

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Work on

• Responding to stimulus
• Tighter sentence structure, avoid too many
  complex sentences
• Better use of paragraphing
• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Avoid slang and cliches
• Use your best vocabulary

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Why plan a plan of attack?

• One go at it
• It works
• Fail to plan, you plan to fail
• It is a demanding task
• Flair and originality
• Reflects generic conventions
• Free of technical errors
• 2 hours
• No computer, dictionaries or help

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Using Your Time Effectively

• 10 min (Perusal)
• 20 min Planning
• 30/30 min Draft / edit
• 40 min Final draft
• Warnings 30min prior to finish time
• 10min prior to finish time

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How is my writing marked?

• Trained and registered markers
• Mark according to standards developed for a set
  of criteria
• Each response is marked at least three times by
  different markers working independently
• There is a process for monitoring marker
  consistency

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Plan ahead

• Read page 18
• Review the TICGS scheme on page 19- could this
  work for you?
• Use the TICGS format on page 19. Plan a response
  to one of the two examples from page 11-14.

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Drafting and Editing

• Read page 20- highlight the key points or areas
  that you need to remind yourself of!!! (What are
  your weak points?)

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The Power of Planning

• Not even the most gifted writer can sit down and
  produce a flawless piece without planning
• Writing - ALL writing - is a process consisting
  of
• brainstorming
• planning
• drafting
• editing
• proofreading

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Planning is the key to

• effective links to the theme and the stimulus
  piece
• a plausible and logically structured response
• maintaining your sanity.
• Accepting responsibility for your efforts, this
  is not a luck or personality test.

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Therefore...

• you must allocate blocks of time to each phase
  of the writing process.

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Last thoughts

• Support one another
• Work with the process of preparing for the
  writing task
• Conquer it and develop a plan to manage the task
• No luck needed you make your own good fortune
  through diligence preparation
• Prepare yourself mentally and physically

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Take responsibility for your results!