Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ

Direct instruction fit for purpose:

applying a metalinguistic toolkit to
enhance creative writing in the early
secondary years
Sally Humphrey
Australian Catholic University

Susan Feez
University of New England

Abstract

This paper reports on a language-based model of direct instruction known as text-based, or

genre, pedagogy, customised in collaboration with English teachers in four Australian secondary
schools to teach creative writing in Years 7 and 8 classrooms. A distinctive feature of this
pedagogy is a shared metalanguage used to make visible to students the literacy demands of
specialised discourse, in this case, the specialised discourse of creative writing. We demonstrate
the use of the metalanguage at four different levels of language, in order to build visible bridges
from more general patterns of language use, in this case, the generic structure of narrative, to
specific grammatical patterns that require more specialised terminology.

Introduction or genre, pedagogy (Derewianka & Jones, 2012; de Silva

In the teaching of English, direct instruction, character-
ised by explicit and systematic teaching about language,
has been found to provide optimal support for student
writers, particularly those for whom English is an addi-
tional language and those from low socio-economic
backgrounds (Gibbons, 2009; Schleppegrell, 2013;
Hammond, 2012; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006).
With its origins in the 1970s, direct instruction has
regained prominence in the research literature with
evidence of the positive impact it can have on student
learning (Adams & Engelman, 1996; Carnine, Silbert,
Kame’enui & Tarver, 2009; Engelmann & Bruner,
2003; Hattie, 2009, 2012; Rosenshine, 2008; Slocum,
2004). Direct instruction has been associated with
didactic and teacher-centred approaches; however, in
the Australian context the term is also used to refer to
writing instruction that stresses ‘the value of “explicit”
knowledge of grammar and all textual codes’ (Luke,
2014, p. 1). Such approaches, often termed text-based,
Joyce & Feez, 2012; Rose & Martin, 2012), are aligned
with Vygotsky’s (1986/1934) account of learning as a
socially mediated activity, involving collaboration
and interaction between the teacher and the student.
They are informed by a metalanguage derived from
systemic functional linguistics (hereafter, SFL), the
metalanguage which also informs the Language Strand
of the Australian Curriculum: English (Derewianka,
2012). A functional metalanguage makes it possible for
teachers and students to talk systematically about the
way grammar and rhetoric are used creatively in the
composition of literary texts (Berry, 2009; Schleppe-
grell, 2013).
This article describes teachers’ use of a text-based
pedagogy in which content related to the Language
strand of the Australian Curriculum: English
(Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (here-
after ACARA), 2015) is integrated with content related
to the Literature and Literacy strands. To illustrate the

Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016 207
HUMPHREY & FEEZ • Direct instruction fit for purpose
pedagogy, and its enabling metalanguage, we draw
on data from four related projects undertaken with
Australian middle years English teachers (Humphrey
& Macnaught, 2015) to assist teachers to program for
creative writing instruction. Findings indicating posi-
tive effects of the metalanguage of systemic functional
linguistics (SFL) in informing classroom interactions
are reported elsewhere (Humphrey & Macnaught,
2015; Humphrey, Sharpe & Cullen, 2015). In this
article we exemplify teachers’ use of metalanguage
in resources produced to teach specialised discourse
patterns of narrative in three Year 8 classes.
Foundational understandings
In order to integrate teaching about specific language
features and creative writing, an instructional sequence
was designed that combined features of two durable
pedagogies, direct instruction and text-based, or genre,
literacy pedagogy.
Direct instruction
Direct instruction first emerged as a means of teaching
early years students at risk of school failure using tech-
niques drawn from the work of behavioural psycholo-
gists. The term ‘direct instruction’ now tends to be used
more generally to refer to instructional patterns that can
be interpreted as ‘visible pedagogy’, following Bernstein
(2000). The effectiveness of this type of instruction is
supported by findings such as Hattie’s (2009) meta-
analytic synthesis of the impact on student achievement
of a range of teaching strategies and approaches. Hattie
(2009) is careful not to confuse direct instruction with
‘didactic teacher-led talking from the front’ (p.  204),
but instead describes it in terms of the ‘pattern’ of crit-
ical planning, delivery and assessment which under-
pins its success (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). This
pattern is promoted by Hattie (2009) as an example of
‘visible teaching’, a pattern he elaborates in seven steps
(pp. 204–205).
Hattie (2009) includes two essential preparatory
steps, where teachers clarify learning intentions and
success criteria, that is, what students should be able
to do or understand as a result of the teaching. In the
context of language and literacy pedagogy, de Silva
Joyce and Feez (2012) incorporate into these steps an
analysis of student language learning needs. In a third
step, the teacher engages students so that they come to
share the same commitment to the learning intentions
and success criteria.
The fourth step, an instructional step, includes
a planned, explicit presentation of the knowledge
students need for success, the monitoring of student
progress and checking for student understanding. The
208 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016
fifth step provides students with multiple opportuni-
ties to practise, supported by teacher guidance and
feedback as needed. The sixth step provides students
with a ‘coherent picture’ of what has been learned
through review, consolidation and reinforcement. In
the final step students display ‘mastery’ of what they
have learned through independent work, perhaps in
different contexts.
The deployment of these instructional steps as a
means of teaching knowledge of literature, language
and creative writing is a design feature of the interven-
tion reported in this article.
Text-based, or genre literacy pedagogy
The principles of direct instruction apply equally well
to text-based literacy pedagogies (de Silva Joyce & Feez,
2012) which first emerged in Australia in the 1980s,
and which were designed to ‘enable any student to
succeed with the writing demands of the school’ (Rose
& Martin, 2012, p. 1). The explicit teaching principles,
strategies and approaches that characterise the peda-
gogy have been consistently supported in the teacher
effectiveness literature (Clark, Kirschner & Sweller,
2012; Fisher & Frey, 2010; Marchand-Martella &
Martella, 2009; Rosenshine, 1997, 2012).
In the intervention reported here a simple four-stage
teaching and learning cycle was used for teachers first
learning to implement the text-based pedagogy. The
thread weaving the stages of this cycle together was a
shared metalanguage through which language patterns
highly valued in creative writing were made visible to
students, who were then supported in appropriating
these patterns for their own creative literary purposes.
The four stages of the cycle, adapted from Callaghan
and Rothery (1988), as presented in Figure 1, are
building the context, modelling, guided writing and
independent composition.
During the first stage of the cycle, building the context,
the teacher establishes for students a context in which
texts of the target type can be used in a purposeful and
socio-culturally meaningful way. Students engage in
exploratory activities to build knowledge of the rele-
vant topic or social activity (field) and ‘the role of the
genre under focus in school learning and in the life of
the community’ (Rothery, 1996, p.  104). During the
modelling stage, students engage in carefully planned
learning activities that focus attention on how language
patterns function within exemplary model texts.
In the guided writing stage students, assisted as
needed, apply research skills gained in the first stage
of the cycle to build knowledge and write a further
text of the targeted genre in collaboration with the
teacher. The teacher asks questions to prompt student

Figure 1. Genre-based teaching and learning cycle adapted
from Callaghan and Rothery, 1988
contributions and acts as scribe. All student contribu-
tions are accepted, although the teacher may re-word
them while ‘thinking out aloud’ to model for the
students how to write in a required register, and how to
refine, edit and proofread the draft. The guided writing
stage is often integrated with modelling in smaller iter-
ative cycles as the teaching sequence unfolds. At any
point in the cycle, the pedagogy may be adapted and
differentiated in response to student progress to ensure
success in the final stage.
Independent composition echoes the final step of
the direct instruction pattern, where students research,
draft, edit and proofread their texts independently,
consulting with the teacher and classmates as needed
to refine their writing. Students are provided with feed-
back on their writing and are also given opportunities
to reflect on how some writers creatively exploit the
stages, phases and language features of the genre they
now control, and to think about and experiment with
how they might transfer what they have learnt to other
contexts.
Underpinning genre pedagogy is a metalanguage
shared by the teacher and students. The key affordances
of this metalanguage are explored in more detail in the
next section.
Metalanguage as a resource for writing
Central to the design of the projects reported here was
the development with teachers of a metalanguage frame-
work as a resource for teachers’ planning and instruc-
tion of creative writing. The framework is derived from
systemic functional linguistics (SFL), a social semiotic
theory that describes language in terms of meaning
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016 209
Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ
and its variation in different contexts (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004).
Modelling context
At the most abstract level, context is modelled in terms
of the overall purposes and goals for which language
is used in a culture and how these purposes shape
the overall structure of texts (Martin & Rose, 2008).
Knowledge of this level of context, known as genre,
has been internationally recognised as enabling educa-
tionally valued generic text patterns to be made visible
to students (Brisk 2015, Christie, 2012; Coffin, 2006;
Derewianka & Jones, 2012; Rose & Martin, 2012;
Tardy, 2013). However, critics argue that classroom
practices which present texts to students in terms of
social purpose and generic structure alone allow little
room for individual variation or creativity (Kamler,
2001; Hasan, 1996). Presenting abstract labels for text
stages (for example, narrative stage labels, orientation,
complication and resolution), without making clear
the systematic relationship with the linguistic resources
used to construct the stages, limits possibilities for
students to innovate, redesign and subvert prototypical
generic text patterns (Kress, 2003; Martin, 2002).
Also problematic are applications of genre peda-
gogy which omit the significant influence of the more
immediate level of context, known in the SFL model as
register. Register includes: the social activity, topic or
subject matter (field); the relationship between author
and audience (tenor); and the medium through which
the text is communicated (mode). A description of the
register of a text helps predict the language resources
used to express the meanings in a text and to organise
these meanings in terms of four systems, or metafunc-
tions (Halliday, 1978).
Metafunctions and language levels
The four systems of meanings, or metafunctions,
described by SFL theory include the experiential and
the logical, which combine to realise the register vari-
able of field; the interpersonal metafunction, which
realises tenor, and the textual metafunction, which
realises mode (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Each
of these systems of meaning find their expression at
different levels of language, including the level of
lexico-grammar and the level of discourse semantics
(Martin & Rose, 2007).
While language choices from all metafunctions
interact across texts to make meaning, most relevant
to the teaching and learning activities described in
this paper are language resources of the experiential
metafunction, representing our experience of the world.
Lexico-grammatical resources include ‘happenings’, or
HUMPHREY & FEEZ • Direct instruction fit for purpose
processes, expressed as verb groups; the participants,
expressed typically as noun groups and adjectivals; and
the circumstances surrounding the processes, expressed
as adverbials. Discourse semantic resources are organ-
ised into patterns across larger units of text, including
meaning units called phases, which are composed of
patterns of entities and activity sequences that build
particular fields. In the metalanguage framework,
which we prepared for teachers in the projects as a
‘toolkit’ for talking about texts, four types of phases
were identified as important for building story world
fields: action, reaction, interaction and description.
Applying an experiential lens to the level of context,
the stages of a narrative text can be understood as the
unfolding of a particular story ‘world’ involving events
(plot), characters and settings.
In creative writing, experiential meanings are also
used to build the field in which a story is set and the
plot unfolds. Many successful creative writers compose
stories with plots that traverse one or more fields, a
technique that demands quite sophisticated deployment
of experiential meanings (Rothery, 1996).
Designing a pedagogical intervention
The instructional sequence for teaching creative
writing described below was designed, implemented
and refined in partnership with 21 English teachers and
their academic mentors at four secondary schools in
metropolitan Sydney. Teachers participated in profes-
sional learning workshops during 2013 to further their
knowledge of how to support the literacies of their
students, most of whom are from low socio-economic
backgrounds, and in the case of three of the four
schools, are also learners of English as an additional
language (EAL/D). A significant proportion of Year 7
students at each school did not achieve the minimum
national standard in writing, as revealed by an analysis
of national writing assessment results (ACARA, 2011)
conducted prior to the innovation.
This intervention was one of a series of longitudinal
multidisciplinary projects which examined the impact
of the use of metalanguage in classroom instruction on
early secondary student achievement in writing. While
previous reports on this series of projects have focused
on findings related to the impact on teachers’ sustained
use of metalanguage and on students’ writing outcomes
across curriculum areas (Humphrey & Macnaught,
2015; Humphrey, Sharpe & Cullen, 2015), this article
describes the metalanguage customised specifically for
teaching creative writing in Years 7 and 8 and how
this metalanguage was deployed throughout the stages
of the instructional sequence. The findings reported
210 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016
here draw on two datasets: one tracking the design and
development of instructional sequences for teaching
creative writing across all four schools and the other
used to evaluate the impact of these instructional
sequences on students’ writing in one school.
The baseline for tracking the design and development
of instructional sequences for teaching creating writing
was established by selecting, prior to the investigation,
a sample set of narrative texts composed by students
in the four schools, as well as model texts, both narra-
tive and response texts, composed by the participating
teachers, and excerpts from exemplary literary texts
used as the focus of study in Years 7 and 8. Analysis of
texts and teachers’ feedback made it possible to incor-
porate into the design of the instructional sequences
patterns of language valued by teachers from across the
different learning contexts.
Data collected to evaluate the intervention in three
classrooms at one school included:
• three teacher assessments of students’ writing
development, as measured by their average grades
on creative writing assessment tasks conducted prior
to and following the intervention
• three teachers’ comments in post-intervention
interviews
• a sample of student self-evaluations on a web-based
self-assessment task completed following the
teaching.
The student self-evaluations were selected by the
lead/senior literacy teacher who identified this sample
as representative of changes in the way students in the
study talked about their textual practices.
To prepare for the professional learning workshops,
the set of baseline narrative texts written by students
before the intervention, the model texts and selected
excerpts from literary texts were analysed by the
academic mentor, using the metafunctions and levels
of the SFL model of language. The findings from these
analyses were presented to the participating teachers at
the professional learning workshops and became the
basis for customising the SFL metalanguage so it would
support the subsequent programming, instruction and
assessment of creative writing. Language resources
which, it was agreed based on the analyses, were crit-
ical to realising experiential meanings in the analysed
exemplary literary texts, all of which were narratives,
are presented in Table 1. The way the metalanguage
in this table is used to support student investigation of
the construction of field in exemplary narrative texts is
discussed in the following section.
 Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ

Table 1. Critical language resources for expressing experiential meanings in narrative texts

Language Resources for Narrative Texts (4x4)

Levels Whole text Phase level Sentence and clause Word & Expression
Functions (genre and register) (discourse semantics) (grammar)

Language to Literary themes and Inner and outer worlds Noun groups build Vocabulary choices
express ideas story ‘worlds’ unfold unfold through phases characters and events as nouns, adjectives,
around a central of: within the field of the adverbs, verbs build a
complication, which is • action story. vivid literary world.
Experiential resolved in some way. (problems, solutions) Verb groups represent Auxiliary and main
meanings related Story worlds include:
• reaction (thoughts, a range of processes verbs create tense
to FIELD everyday, fantasy,
feelings) (action, saying, sensing, (e.g. past simple).
science fiction and relating) to build
historical worlds. • interaction between
phases.
characters
Adverbials specify
• description
circumstances of time,
(dynamic, static)
place, manner.

Designing a cycle of teaching and learning for
creative writing
To design a cycle of teaching and learning for creative
writing, the teachers in the study, and their academic
partners, drew on the framework of metalinguistic
knowledge, gained in the professional learning work-
shops, to analyse student learning needs against
both the content descriptions of the three strands of
the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E) and the
language resources realising experiential meaning in
the literary language of the exemplary narrative texts.
Selecting and integrating curriculum content
The teaching and learning cycle was implemented to
support students as they worked towards composing a
written narrative. Their task was to compose a narra-
tive which explored an issue relevant to young people in
the context of a unit of work entitled Youth Issues. This
unit of work was based on study of the novel, Lockie
Leonard, Human Torpedo, by Tim Winton (1990).
This novel was chosen for study because of its relevance
to the unit theme and to the interests of students in the
early years of the secondary school. More importantly,
however, the language of the text could ‘bear scrutiny’
Freebody (2011), not only in terms of its literary quality
but also as a mentor text for composing literary texts,
addressing the following AC: E Year 7 Literature strand
content:
Recognise and analyse the ways that characterisa-
tion, events and settings are combined in narratives …
(ACELT1622).
This becomes the foundation for the following Year
8 Literature strand content:
Experiment with particular language features drawn
from different types of texts, including combinations
of language and visual choices to create new texts
(ACELT1768)
At the same time, the choice of narrative as the
language and literacy focus of the intervention
addressed the following Year 8 Literacy strand content:
Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts
that raise issues … (ACELY1736).
Addressing students’ language and literacy learning
needs
As well as accounting for AC: E content, the intervention
aimed to address the learning needs identified during
the analysis of the sample student narrative texts. This
analysis revealed that, while most students were able to
structure the events in a narrative to compose a simple
plot comprising a complication followed by a reso-
lution of some kind, many had difficulty composing
engaging descriptions of character and setting. The
excerpt from Text 1 in Figure 2, from a story written
by a Year 7 student prior to the intervention, is typical
of the writing that demonstrated to the project teachers
that students would benefit from being taught explic-
itly how to compose phases of descriptions in narrative
texts. As one teacher noted, ‘The students are so plot
driven, they don’t stop to let us smell the roses or get to
know the characters’.
To provide students with a model for expanding their
creative writing repertoire, the teachers and academic
partners analysed the language used by Tim Winton
(1990) to describe setting and build character in his
novel. Teachers noted how Winton built character and
setting through phases of description that focus either
on entities and their qualities, or on the behaviours of
entities. To draw students’ attention to the different
patterns of language used in the two different types

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HUMPHREY & FEEZ • Direct instruction fit for purpose

Figure 2. Text extract

of descriptive phases, the academic partners added Scaffolding through the stages of the teaching
the terms ‘static’ description and ‘dynamic’ descrip- and learning cycle
tion to the teachers’ metalanguage toolkit. Both static The literacy teaching and learning cycle was designed to
and dynamic descriptions are exemplified in Winton’s scaffold the expansion of the students’ creative writing
contrasting portrayals of two young characters (Table repertoire by shifting the focus of attention from the
2). top down, in other words, from the stages of the whole
narrative, to the composition of phases, and to the
Table 2. Static and dynamic description phases in
structure of clauses used to compose each phase. In this
the novel: Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
section we outline the activities in a lesson sequence
Text 2 Text 3 designed to support student writing of narrative phases,
a more static description a more dynamic description specifically the description phases used to describe char-
At twelve and three It was easy to cut a kid like acter and setting. The cycle of genre-based teaching and
quarters, Lockie Leonard Phillip. But sometimes he learning activities is interpreted below in terms of the
was a pretty decent- wanted to tie those stinking seven steps of the direct instruction pattern.
looking bloke. He was PJs around Phillip’s neck
generally polite and and sling him out into the Building the context
(he) knew how to keep rain. As well as wetting
In line with the first three steps of the direct instruction
himself clean and tidy … the bed, Phillip snored and
but … Lockie’s method of smacked his lips like he pattern, the initial context building stage clarified for
eating Weetbix was truly, was at a barbeque. (p. 7) the students the learning intention and success criteria,
awesomely foul. (p. 8) and engaged them in the study of the literary text. The
learning intention was explained in terms of learning
The terms static and dynamic provided teachers with how to write more sophisticated narrative texts. In
an accessible starting point for drawing students’ atten- clarifying the assessment criteria, teachers drew on
tion to clause level grammar features that distinguish the metalanguage they already shared with students
the two types of description. The framework shown in from prior learning, including labels for the stages of
Table 1 was used to identify and organise a ‘toolkit’ of a narrative text, and the literary features of narrative
language features that would be modelled and taught texts related to characterisation and plot structure. In
explicitly. These features included, for static descrip- our sample instructional sequence, the literary text,
tions, relating verb groups (e.g. was) used with extended Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo (Winton, 1990), was
noun groups (e.g. a pretty decent-looking bloke) and introduced not only as a means for determining explicit
adjectival groups (e.g. generally polite), and for dynamic success criteria for the students’ own creative writing of
descriptions, action verb groups (e.g. snored, smacked narratives, but also for exploring issues of interest and
[his lips]) were introduced as key resources. relevance to students in the early secondary years.

212 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016
 Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ

Teaching and learning activities in the context-
building stage were designed to engage students in the
study of the text through reading the story together
for pleasure, sharing personal responses to events and
characters, and discussing the themes and issues in rela-
tion to their own experiences. On this basis, students’
knowledge of the context can be expanded beyond their
lived experiences through teacher-led discussion of the
historical, cultural and social context of the novel.
Classroom discussion about the novel Lockie Leonard,
Human Torpedo included an exploration of the rela-
tionship between the characters and the Western
Australian coastal environment where the story was
set, as well as the challenges the characters faced in that
environment.
Modelling and guided practice
The modelling and guided practice stages of the text-
based cycle of teaching and learning exemplify the
fourth, fifth and sixth steps of the direct instruc-
tion pattern. In the creative writing lesson sequence,
teachers extended students’ prior knowledge of the
narrative genre and its typical stages by introducing
the idea of story worlds, and the way these are built
within and across literary texts. This opened up for
students a more delicate and sophisticated field-related
approach to the development of setting and character.
First, students participated in small group activities to
explore characters, settings and events in familiar story
worlds of literary genres such as fantasy, crime, science
fiction and historical and contemporary realism.
During these activities students begin to create their
own story worlds and build their understandings of
audience expectations of narrative, expectations crea-
tive writers can choose to meet, or to confound.
The metalanguage introduced by the teachers to talk
and think about story worlds enables student explora-
tion of more delicate phases of meaning within narra-
tives, at the discourse semantic level of language. Using
the metalanguage customised to talk about creative
writing, phases were introduced in the lesson sequence
as ‘chunks’ of meaning for building the inner and outer
experiences of the characters. A phase in a narrative
can express meanings related to characters’ outer

Table 3. Story phases in opening chapter of the novel: Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

Phases Teaching notes for modelling

Text 4 (Excerpt) Reaction phase:

The first day Lockie Leonard saw this town it was raining. The old family Novel starts with emotional and sensory
Falcon had been loaded down like a refugee boat as they rolled into this little reactions of the family to the description
place fresh from the city. The whole family had tried to be cheerful about it, of the town and house.
but the place looked awful. The town was small and crummy-looking and
when they saw the house the police force had organised for them, everyone in
the car went quiet. Lockie’s little brother looked at him, pegging his nose with
his fingers. His baby sister squirmed on the front seat. His dad left the motor
running. His mum just started bawling. (p. 5)

Text 5 (Excerpt) Description phase

Funny thing is, Lockie got to like that place. It was a big old fibro joint with Lockie’s initial emotional reaction creates
a rusty tin roof, and it went all higgledy-piggledy inside, like whoever built it a contrast with the preceding phase. The
kept having more kids and just bunged on a room every Christmas. It was on following description of features justifies
swampy ground next to the showgrounds … (p. 5) his positive reaction.

Text 6 (Excerpt) Action phase

The first few weeks in town, Lockie lay on his bed getting up a sweat, or Lockie’s behaviours are implicit reactions,
went out walking around the swampy drains behind the house. He played and evidence of a troubled mood.
his Van Halen tapes and stood in front of the mirror with his tennis racquet,
giving it vibrato and thrash chords and feedback to forget his troubles. He
really hammered that old Slazenger like it was connected to a million watts of
distortion. (p. 6)

Text 7 (Excerpt) Interaction phase

The baby was called Barbara, but Lockie called her Blob. Lockie’s interaction with his sister shows
‘G’day Blob,’ he muttered. his soft side and a good relationship with
his family.
‘Ock-ock-ock!’
‘She wants to sit on your lap, love,’ Mrs Leonard said.
‘Here, then.’ Lockie reached up and took Blob under the arms … (p. 7)

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HUMPHREY & FEEZ • Direct instruction fit for purpose

Table 4. Year 7 Guided practice activity

Guided practice in creating description phases

Description phases are important for introducing characters and settings in ways that create particular narrative
worlds. Below are some sample description phases from the early chapters of Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo, which
create the settings and characters in this contemporary realist world. Identify the type of description and then follow
that pattern to write your own descriptions of settings or people in your own world.

Description phases from Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo Type of description Your description

Description of Lockie’s school Static Description of your school

Text 8 (Excerpt) The school wasn’t anywhere as
The school wasn’t anywhere near as ugly as the high schools spacious as the high schools in
in the city. City schools looked like those in concentration the country. Country high schools
camps you see on movies. The place was old. It looked kind looked like barns you see on outback
of dignified. Out the front, at the edge of the sloping lawns, movies …
there were hedges clipped in the shape of animals. (p. 10)

Description of Lockie’s brother Dynamic Description of a sibling, cousin,

Text 9 (Excerpt) friend or pet!
… As well as wetting the bed, Phillip snored and smacked his As well as slobbering, Billy gobbles
lips like he was at a barbeque. (p. 7) his food like he hasn’t eaten in days.

experiences through an Action, contributing to the
plot. Meanings related to inner experiences are typi-
cally expressed through a Reaction, providing details
of the characters’ emotional responses or thoughts,
and a Description of a character or setting. Interac-
tions between characters may contribute to building
both inner and outer experiences. The function of each
of these types of phases in the creation of story worlds
can be discussed and illustrated with examples taken
from an episode of the model text. Examples taken
from Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo, with accom-
panying planning notes made by teachers are presented
in Table 3.
Teachers reported that the metalanguage of ‘story-
worlds’ and the terminology for naming narrative
phases expanded their repertoire for talking about
narrative structure. The functional orientation, and
parallel sound patterns, of the terms action, reaction,
interaction and description produced an accessible
metalanguage for students. The examples in Table 3
also illustrate that, while phases are often contained
within paragraphs, their length varies and it is rare
to find a phase that does not include traces of other
phases. Providing examples such as these encourages
students to consider language units in terms of poten-
tial and function, rather than as ‘rules’ that must be
slavishly followed.
To attend to description phases used to introduce
characters to an audience (Table 2) teachers guided
students in a close reading of phases describing char-
acters in the literary text. Students were then invited
to draw a portrait of each character to represent visu-
ally their comprehension and interpretation of the
description. The drawing activity was designed to
enhance students’ appreciation of the literary work
involved in composing each description phase and to
prepare them for studying the language patterns used
to do this work, patterns they could later use in their
own creative writing.
Students’ responses to the drawing activity were used
to introduce the metalanguage, static and dynamic,
and as a means of drawing attention to the distinctive
rhetorical patterns of each description phase type. Static
descriptions were identified as patterns of qualities (e.g.
a pretty decent-looking bloke; generally polite; clean
and tidy). Dynamic descriptions, in contrast, were iden-
tified as patterns of behaviours, or activities (wetting
the bed; snored, smacked his lips like he was at a
barbeque). To avoid reductive accounts of phase types,
examples were also provided of description phases in
which both qualities and activities are combined. The
students were invited to grade these descriptions on a
cline between the extremes of static description and
dynamic description.
Using the terms ‘dynamic’ and ‘static’, as well as the
terms ‘qualities’ and ‘activities’, students were invited
to participate in a whole class guided composition of
descriptions of shared acquaintances. In the exam-
ples presented in Table 4, a guided practice activity
prepared by a teacher participating in the interven-
tion includes excerpts from Lockie Leonard, Human
Torpedo (Winton, 1990), alongside responses recorded
in one participating Year 7 classroom.
This activity was designed to support students to
appropriate the rhetorical patterns they had explored in
the literary text as the basis for successful composition

214 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016
 Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ

Table 5. Basic clause patterns used in static description phases

(a) ‘who – is – who’ clauses

who is/was who

Lockie Leonard was a pretty decent-looking bloke.

Lockie’s mum was the serious sort

She was just a flaming nuisance

Noun group/pronoun to name relating verb noun group with describing

person adjectives

(b) ‘who – is – what like’ clauses

who is/was what like

He was generally polite

She was concerned, conscientious

noun group/pronoun to name relating verb adjectival wording to describe

person quality

of their own description phases. Once the students
were familiar with these patterns, they were ready to
examine them more closely to understand the clause
level grammar that constructs the meanings made by
the patterns. In the following section we illustrate this
by describing how clause level grammatical patterns
used to create static descriptions were modelled to
students.
Modelling grammatical patterns (static
descriptions)
To explore and model grammatical patterns in static
descriptions, phases from the model literary text were
used, as well as phases composed by teachers and
students collaboratively, and by students individu-
ally. Before introducing more technical grammatical
terminology, the teacher may use everyday ‘bridging’
metalanguage to model two basic clause patterns used
to compose static character descriptions: the ‘who is
who?’ pattern, to identify characters, and the ‘who is
what like?’ pattern, to describe characters (Table 5).
The more technical terminology for identifying the
lexico-grammatical features of the clauses is provided
in the last row of each table, although, this was not
initially shown to students.
Meaning based bridging metalanguage was used to
familiarise students with how to chunk grammatical
elements in terms of meaning, at group, rather than
word level. Group level structures provide creative
writers with more potential to expand descriptive
meaning, including adjectives (initially named using
bridging metalanguage as ‘short describers’) before
the main noun, and adjectival phrases and clauses
(‘long describers’) after the main noun. The meaning
potential of this pattern is illustrated in Table 6 using a
descriptive clause from the model literary text, Lockie
Leonard, Human Torpedo (Winton, 1990).
Once a number of examples of clauses composed
using these patterns were explored, the technical gram-
matical terms at both group and word level (e.g. noun,
noun group, adjective, adjectival phrase) were intro-
duced. The grammatical forms labelled by these terms
were carefully related to their function, as illustrated
in Table 6.
As can be seen in the examples, static descriptions are
composed largely of extended noun groups and adjec-
tival elements (e.g. a pretty decent-looking bloke), while
dynamic descriptions deploy a range of verb types,
often with enriched meanings (e.g. snored, smacked).
The two excerpts below have been annotated to illus-
trate these patterns. Entities represented as extended
noun groups are underlined and qualities expressed

Table 6. Group level structures in a descriptive clause

Clause a big hairy country-looking kid with bad teeth swooshed past him on a wave

Noun group a big hairy country-looking kid with bad teeth

Function short describers thing long describers

Form article adjectives noun adjectival phrase

Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016 215
HUMPHREY & FEEZ • Direct instruction fit for purpose
adjectivally are double underlined. Relating verbs,
used to link entities and qualities, are highlighted, and
action verb groups are in bold font. The metalanguage
used by teachers to name these lexico-grammatical
features refers to the function of the feature as well as
to the form.
Text 2a
At twelve and three quarters, Lockie Leonard was
a pretty decent-looking bloke. He was generally
polite and (he) knew how to keep himself clean and
tidy … but … Lockie’s method of eating Weetbix
was truly, awesomely foul. (Winton, 1990, p. 8)
Text 3a
It was easy to cut a kid like Phillip. But sometimes
he wanted to tie those stinking PJs around Phil-
lip’s neck and sling him out into the rain. As well
as wetting the bed, Phillip snored and smacked his
lips like he was at a barbeque. (Winton, 1990, p. 7)
During the intervention teachers were encouraged to
emphasise that grammar should be considered in terms
of patterns rather than rules, encouraging students
to create descriptions that mixed static and dynamic
meaning patterns in innovative ways. Nevertheless, by
first introducing these two patterns as distinct types,
teachers were able to distinguish for students the
distinctive grammatical functions and forms needed
for composing literary descriptions.
Independent composition
The previous section illustrated how metalanguage
was used to describe language patterns for creating, at
multiple text levels, experiential meanings in stories.
For some students, the use of the metalanguage at the
discourse semantic level may be sufficient to support
them in creating rich and extended descriptions in
their independent writing. For others, however, and
particularly students learning English as an additional
language or dialect (EAL/D), explicit modelling of the
lexico-grammatical resources may be needed for them
to create these literary description patterns indepen-
dently. In the next section we will briefly discuss an
analysis of how metalanguage was used first to support
students during independent writing and then to
provide them with feedback on their work.
Using metalanguage for independent writing and
feedback
During the first three stages of the instructional
sequence based on the novel Lockie Leonard, Human
Torpedo (Winton, 1990) students were provided with
the support they needed to construct description phases
216 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016
independently in the last stage of the sequence. Teachers
reported that students’ need for guidance during this
stage varied. In one Year 8 class with a high propor-
tion of EAL/D learners the teacher provided guidance
by showing an image of a boy dressed in a football
club uniform holding a football. After brainstorming
possible storylines relating the image to the youth issues
theme, students independently composed a description
of the character to use in their story. The following is a
character description, which the teacher reported was
typical of those written by students in the class:
Text 10
As John pulled his favourite brown Hawthorne
jersey on over his shirt, he became an almighty
warrior ready to face the crucial grand final that
stood ahead of him. He stormed out of the change
room and onto the football field.
When analysing the text with her colleagues and the
academic mentor, the teacher used the metalanguage to
attend to the way the student had combined both static
and dynamic description, and had used extended noun
groups (e.g. his favourite brown Hawthorne jersey) and
an expressive action verb (stormed). This demonstrates
the value of using metalanguage to attend to language
features of student texts at both the discourse semantic
and lexico-grammatical levels.
Impact of direct instruction intervention on student
writing in one school
While an analysis of specific improvements in students’
independently written narratives in all participating
classes is beyond the scope of this article, teachers’
formal assessments of Year 8 students’ writing in one
school demonstrated the effectiveness of the interven-
tion. In this school, participating teachers in three
Year 8 classes reported that they used both the meta­
language introduced in the professional learning work-
shops and the resources designed collaboratively with
academic mentors and colleagues, including those
shown in Tables 2–6. These teachers found a significant
gain in student achievement in narrative writing assess-
ments following the intervention when compared with
assessments undertaken prior to the instructional cycle.
Specifically, 95% of students across the three Year 8
classes in which the cycle was implemented improved
their achievement by one or two letter grades (e.g. from
a C grade to an A grade) in a period of three months.
Teachers’ own evaluations revealed their increased
confidence to use the approach in subsequent teaching
with some also commenting on the ‘engaging and inter-
active’ nature of the lessons.
Also significant are students’ own evaluations of their

progress. In a web-based self-assessment task students
commented on their own writing by responding to the
following question:
What is one thing you have learned to do better in
terms of describing characters or setting?
The following comments, reported by teachers as
representative of students across the three classes, indi-
cate that the students too were able to use aspects of the
metalanguage to make formative assessments of their
writing.
Student A: What I have learned is expanding noun
groups.
Student B: I can use action words as well as normal
descriptive language to describe a person.
In these examples, students do not yet use metalan-
guage at the level of phase (e.g. dynamic description);
however, they do show an awareness of the func-
tional role of both noun groups and verb groups, and,
crucially, the contribution of these resources to building
character in description phases of narratives.
The cycle of teaching and learning described above,
and the way the students were supported to use meta-
language as a resource for creative writing, is illustra-
tive only. Nevertheless, this description resonates with
a growing body of literature demonstrating the value
of teaching knowledge about language explicitly using
direct instruction techniques, and of providing students
with a metalanguage that enables them to talk and
think reflectively about their language use (Brisk, 2012;
Gebhard, Harman and Seger, 2007; Myhill, Lines &
Watson, 2011; Schleppegrell, 2013).
Conclusion
In this article we have reported on the design of an
instructional sequence which was implemented in
four early secondary creative writing classrooms. This
sequence features a shared metalanguage at the heart
of a type of direct instruction known as text-based, or
genre, literacy pedagogy. Genre pedagogy comprises
cycles of instruction that instantiate the general princi-
ples underlying direct instruction, as described by Hattie
(2009), in particular explicit instructional procedures
used to meet planned success criteria. We have argued
that for direct instruction to be fit for purpose in the
context of text-based approaches to teaching writing,
a metalanguage shared by teachers and students is
required. As demonstrated in the resources produced
by academic mentors and participating teachers across
four participating schools, a shared metalanguage
makes visible for students the literacy demands of the
specialised discourse of narrative, beyond basic generic
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016 217
Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ
structure. Furthermore, it provides students with a
means for analysing exemplary literary texts so they
can identify the discourse patterns and strategies used
by expert writers, and to appropriate, reflectively, these
patterns and strategies to enhance the quality of their
own writing.
As illustrated in the evaluation of the intervention
in one school, the metalanguage introduced with and
illustrated by model texts becomes a valuable resource
students can use to reflect on their own writing during
the revision and editing process. The use of metalan-
guage liberates the pedagogy from the didacticism
often associated with direct instruction in general, and
text-based literacy pedagogies in particular. Playful
activities, such as composing visual representations in
response to written literary descriptions and re-applying
discourse patterns to the drafting of rich descriptions
of characters in their own stories, demonstrate the indi-
vidual control and creativity the metalanguage affords
the students. In this paper, we have presented the meta-
language as a tool students can use to reflect on their
own writing. The potential of the metalanguage as a
teaching resource for providing students with princi-
pled and systematic feedback against success criteria is
yet to be explored. Ongoing analysis of the case study
data from the four early secondary projects presented
above will no doubt reveal more about this potential.
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 Direct instruction fit for purpose • HUMPHREY & FEEZ

Sally Humphrey is Senior Lecturer in literacy education at the Australian Catholic University. Sally has worked
for many years in the field of literacy and social semiotics as a teacher educator and educational linguist in school
and higher education contexts. Her research has drawn on systemic functional linguistics, genre and appraisal
theory and rhetoric to support adolescent learners to develop the literacies needed for participation in academic
and civic life.

Susan Feez is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New England. She teaches
and researches in the field of educational linguistics, with particular interest in the teaching of English as an
additional language or dialect (EAL/D), initial literacy education and discipline-specific literacy education. Susan
also has expertise in Montessori education. In addition Susan has a special interest in applying research findings
to pedagogy and resource development.

Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2016 219
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