Procedural Text Vocabulary

[Barbro Faries]

Thereare a lot of resources these days for how-to writing. Use cookbooks, magazines, gameboard instructions, and newspapers. The Internet is another excellent resource. Here are some of my favorites:

Once students study the texts, create the craft and recipe, develop their directions, or make board game instructions. Whatever the activity, this shared experience help students build background and vocabulary.

One of my new favorite activities is the one below. Using Google Slides, students try to replicate an image using shapes. It makes for a great choice when having to teach online, too. Here is an example for my February unit of Abraham Lincoln.

IMPORTANT: The decision to use technology is dependent on several factors. Most of the time, my students write the good ole fashion way using paper and pencil, but sometimes I let them write their first draft using technology.

Graphic organizers make an excellent scaffold for students when writing procedural writing. The graphic organizer helps students plan out their writing since it has the headings for each part of the how-to text.

I clump these two apps together. Students use the slides to create the steps for the how-to. One thing I do enjoy about Seesaw over Google Slides is the ability for students to create video and audio right inside the app.

I use rubrics to help students self-evaluate their work and allow me to grade their writing. Rubrics are a great way of setting the expectations for the paper. I love having students help me build the rubric, too. It helps to hold themselves accountable.

In some parts of the world, you may encounter procedural writing called a Process Analysis Essay. This title gives students a greater understanding of their purpose of analyzing a process and writing it up as a simple procedure to be followed by the reader.

Having a good grasp of this type of genre writing has multiple possible real-life applications for our students. Luckily for such an important genre, procedural texts are one of the more accessible genres to teach and successfully produce as a student.

In short, an explanation text is for the THINKER in us as it takes the time to EXPLAIN all the background questions that may arise, whereas a procedure is for the DOER in us, providing a highly efficient set of instructions that exist just to get a PROCESS completed.

Given the broad range of forms, a procedural text may take, we should not expect that all the structure and features outlined will apply equally to each type of text. However, the following is some valuable general advice for students to bear in mind when they are considering the language registers of their text.

Given the nature of these types of text, the simple present tense is the preferred tense for this type of writing. In this regard, it offers an excellent opportunity to focus on verb work, especially on imperatives. These command words, or bossy words, such as cut, take, and hold, are often used to give orders for readers to follow as they move step by step through the process outlined in the text.

Actions should be outlined sequentially, and time connectives can be used to help organize the necessary steps chronologically. For example, the use of adverbial time words, such as: first, second, before, then, and after. Encourage students to focus on answering the questions of where and when of each action they instruct the reader to follow.

To help your students understand the importance of the title and its relationship with the goal of the text, provide them with a set of procedural texts with the titles removed. In groups, have them brainstorm a variety of titles for the text. When they are finished, reveal the original title of the text and compare it with the suggestions made by the group. Soon they will start to see the pattern evolve, which will help them when they come to produce and name their own procedural texts.

Usually done in the form of a list, this component may also be titled Materials, Equipment, Ingredients, Items Needed etc. and is pretty self-explanatory. This component comprises a list of things required to complete the procedure outlined in the text. For a recipe, this will obviously include things like ingredients but may also include things like the appliances and tools required to follow that recipe to completion. For flat-pack furniture, for example, items like a screwdriver or spanner, the glue will form this section. Science experiment procedural texts will include apparatus such as Bunsen burners, test tubes, litmus paper etc. Regardless of the specific purpose of the text in question, the resources listed in this section will usually be presented in the order they will be used, as far as this is relevant or possible.

This is the heart of the procedural text as it outlines step-by-step the methodology to follow in the procedure itself. Again, the title of this section of the procedural text may vary depending on the specific type of writing it is. Longer user guides and instructional manuals will have a complex and extensive list of steps to follow that will employ subtitles and subsections to explain micro-processes within the wider procedure being described. More straightforward texts, such as recipes, will be much less complex in structure. It is essential to encourage students to think very logically about the process they are attempting to outline in their writing. Too often, students write themselves into corners as they try to describe complicated procedures while struggling with the technical difficulties of constructing grammatically sound sentences. A good rule of thumb for student writers is to use many short and simple sentences when writing about complex ideas. We will talk more about this aspect when we discuss language features in greater detail.

The conclusion of a procedural text offers guidance to the reader on how they can evaluate the success of the procedure that has been followed. This may take the form of, for example, a description of the completed meal for a recipe text or a description of the assembled furniture in a flat-pack instruction guide. Depending on the type of text in question, illustrations can often be used to reinforce what a successfully followed procedure will look like.

The challenge in writing an excellent procedural text is to deliver your instructions logically. Ensure your instructions are straight to the point and that you, as the author understand what you are trying to achieve. You really want to answer three questions to your audience.

Depending on the nature of the text, employ diagrams, schematics, tables, and even cartoons! As with the written text, these images will often be ordered sequentially along with the corresponding text and usually labelled or accompanied by a caption.

Below are a collection of student writing samples of procedural texts. Click on the image to enlarge and explore them in greater detail. Please take a moment to read the procedures in detail and the teacher and student guides highlighting some of the critical elements of writing a procedure before beginning.

Please understand these student writing samples are not intended to be perfect examples for each age or grade level but a piece of writing for students and teachers to explore together to critically analyze to improve student writing skills and deepen their understanding of procedural text writing.

Be sure to check out our guide to mastering procedural writing in a single week here. And if you are looking for an instant, no prep fantastic teaching resource procedural texts, look no further than this unit on TpT.

As I stated in this article, procedural texts are one of the more straightforward writing genres for students to master. That said, however, mastery only comes with focused practice. Though structurally, this genre is relatively easy for students to grasp, there are still a lot of language features to consider and stylistic conventions to adhere to. As well as that, there is considerable variation in the complexity of the various types of procedural texts, from simple recipes all the way to complex user manuals. All this takes considerable practice, so it is essential that students are offered regular opportunities to hone the broad range of skills required to write well. Some of this learning will take place in discrete sessions dedicated to the writing of procedural texts, but many of the skills will be developed while working on general language skills, whether focused on verbs, tenses, punctuation, reading etc., it will be useful to make links to principles in common with the various writing genres as and when they arise.

Teaching text-specific vocabulary goes hand in hand with the teaching of any new text type. To help you teach your students the subject-specific vocabulary related to procedural writing, the Teach Starter team has created this set of 30 procedural writing word cards. The cards contain vocabulary words related to:

This resource will help you incorporate vocabulary related to writing procedural texts into your lessons. It will also assist your students in becoming more familiar with the key features of this style of expository writing.

Carefully developing mini-lessons that will help students as they write on their own is an important part of planning your procedural writing unit. Here are a few ideas as you are planning to teach procedural writing.

Students can create their own chart and consider things that they would like to teach in their procedural writing. They can create a list of things they can teach readers to do, make, or be. From this list, they can choose one thing that they would like to be the topic of their writing.

Procedural writing allows students to become an expert on a topic. They are able to take a topic and teach others about it. But, sometimes when they are an expert, they may forget small steps that seem simple. While they are so familiar with the topic, the step may seem like it is just common sense. As the writer, they must plan carefully for procedural writing so that all of the materials and steps are clear for the reader.

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