About this activity
Eight tasks that ask for a diagram and then an explanation: draw the steps of the water cycle and explain it using first, next, then and finally; draw a flowchart of how a bill becomes a law and explain each arrow; draw how a plant makes its food, then explain it in your own words; draw a cause-and-effect chain with three links and say each link as a because sentence. Expository discourse is what school actually assesses, and it is almost never practised.
How to use it in a session
Make the diagram rough and the explanation careful. The drawing organises the content so the student's attention can go to the language, which is the connectives — first, next, then, finally for sequence, and because for cause. Ask for the explanation with the diagram covered once they have given it with the diagram visible, since that removes the visual scaffold and is much closer to a test answer. Twenty minutes covers one task properly.
What to listen for
Listen for connectives doing real work. And then repeated four times is a sequence without structure, and the difference between that and first, next, then, finally is exactly what a marker is looking for. Watch the causal chain task, where because has to link three things rather than two — that is where reasoning and language both get tested.
Carrying it home
Ask the student to explain how something works at home — how the washing machine cycle goes, how to get to the shops. Explaining to someone who genuinely does not know is a better task than explaining to someone who does.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Sixth through eighth, matched to when expository writing and explanation dominate assessment.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all eight tasks are free to use.
- Why practise explaining rather than narrating?
- Because school mostly asks for explanation. Narrative gets the attention in language work, and by middle school the discourse students are graded on is expository — process, cause and comparison.