What do you think about your school curriculum?

[Trillian]

It's really important that they learn that there are different text 'types' such as narratives, information reports, expositions, discussions, recounts and explanations. Its about teaching them that different types of texts have different purposes and we use them for different things. Overall, it helps them with their comprehension of what they read. I don't think what your child's school is doing is inappropriate and like with anything, some kids will take longer than others to fully understand the concept and context of each one, and each year it's built on progressively so they might learn how to do a very basic exposition in year 2, but the next year they will need more detail etc. it sounds like what your DD has done is fine (even with your help) because she's still learning the basic fundamentals of that particular text type. I know my school does a scope and sequence outlining which text type will be focused on each term, so for one term they will do narratives and the majority of their work will focus on this text type. Next term it might be information reports. We scaffold the students and support them and provide highly detailed lessons that explain it so they understand it, as well as giving them a lot of guidance and support while writing.

[Snacks]

Thanks for explaining how it all works, Trillian. It has really changed since I was at school! I didn't know what an exposition was until I was writing essays in high school.
Spoke to her teacher this afternoon and she said DD did really well. I did reveal that we wrote it together but she said she was more focused on how confident she was as a speaker and in getting her point across. She said DD has done very well with exposition in general during class so I suppose she does get it after all.

[Trillian]

It's very different to when we were at school. I think the trouble is that most people would think of it as being an essay and that it's way beyond what kids that young should be doing, but it's all part of the 'new literacies' that teaches children to be more active consumers of text I suppose is the best way to describe it. We want kids to be able to think critically about text and how they can use it for the right purpose, for example, if they want to tell a story, they would write a narrative and they know that a narrative has a particular structure to write it. Or if they are trying to convince a parent to buy them something, then they would use a persuasive text and they would know the language they need to use to persuade you to buy them a pony LOL. It's a far broader concept of teaching than the simple fiction/non fiction texts that we were exposed to as kids.

[Snacks]

I should have known better than to think my DDs would struggle with persuasive language. I have been answering "why" questions to both of them and indeed responding to carefully formulated rebuttals for years.
It was also interesting when chatting to the teacher that some of the kids had to get their heads around the idea that they weren't being told an answer. She said that in the early years so much of it is "the right answer" and "the wrong answer" that they took a while to understand there were no "wrong answers" in this unit, only their opinion. The kids were like, "But... but... What's the answer??" lol.

[Trillian]

That's something I notice with the years 5 and 6 students too. They just don't know how to have their own opinion and articulate it properly in writing. They can tell you, but they struggle with writing it out. It's also hard for some of them to understand that there can also be more than one viewpoint on a topic as well and that two people can be arguing for the same thing, but be coming at it from different perspectives. It sounds like your DD is doing just great.