The Teaching–Learning Cycle
What if we taught the writing, not just set it?
The teaching–learning cycle is a Sydney School way of teaching a genre, or type of text, step by step: build topic knowledge, take apart a model text, write a new one together, then let learners write alone.
Many teachers “teach” writing by setting a topic, waiting, then marking. Learners who already know what a good report or argument looks like do well; others are left guessing. In the 1980s, Joan Rothery, Jim Martin and teachers in Sydney’s Disadvantaged Schools Program set out to close that gap.
Their answer, refined over the next decade, was the teaching–learning cycle. Throughout the cycle, teachers build the field, meaning knowledge of the topic, so learners have something to say before they write. In deconstruction, the class takes apart a model text: its purpose, its stages and its key language. In joint construction, teacher and class write a new text together; the teacher guides with questions while learners supply the ideas. Only then comes independent construction, and teachers can loop back to earlier stages as needed. The logic is scaffolding: strong support at first, handed over as learners gain control.
Beverly Derewianka’s Exploring How Texts Work (1990) took school genres into primary classrooms. Pauline Gibbons (2002) later adapted the approach for second language learners in mainstream classrooms. The model has critics: Aviva Freedman questioned whether explicit teaching is needed, or even helpful, for learning new genres, and others warn that models can harden into templates. Supporters reply that explicit, staged support gives every learner access to the genres that schooling rewards, not only those who meet them at home.
In actionJoint construction in action
- T
- Our report is about mangroves. How does an information report usually begin?
- S1
- Say what it is?
- T
- Yes, a general statement. So how could we start?
- S2
- Mangroves is trees near the sea.
- T
- Good idea. Let’s make it sound like a science book. Mangroves are… what kind of trees?
- S1
- Mangroves are trees that grow in salty water along the coast.
- T
- Great, I’ll write that. What should come next?
The teacher scribes and steers, but the wording comes from learners. Together the class moves from spoken to written mode.
In the classroom
- 1
Build the field before any writing: a short video, a reading and a word wall, so learners have something to say. Recycle the new vocabulary in pair talk.
- 2
Deconstruct one model text by labelling its stages in the margin. Highlight just two or three language features, such as timeless present tense or cause-and-effect connectors, rather than everything at once.
- 3
Run joint construction on the board or a shared screen. Write down learners’ suggestions, then reshape them aloud into written mode, explaining each choice.
Myth and reality
The cycle is just “model, then copy”: learners imitate a text and fill in a template.
Deconstruction asks why the model is organised as it is, and joint construction produces a new text, not a copy. The aim is control of a genre’s resources, so that learners can later adapt them.
Reflect
Which stage of the cycle do you skip when time is short, and what happens to your least confident writers when you do?
Worth a minute before your next lesson, or a conversation in the staffroom.
SourcesChecked against Crossref and library records
Developed in the 1980s by Joan Rothery with Jim Martin and teachers in the Disadvantaged Schools Program, and revised in the 1990s Write it Right project. Martin (2009) is a short introduction to three decades of this Australian genre work; Rose and Martin’s Learning to Write, Reading to Learn (2012) tells the full history.
Martin, J. R. (2009). Genre and language learning: A social semiotic perspective. Linguistics and Education, 20(1), 10–21.
Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148–164.
A clear case for genre-based teaching of second language writing, setting out its main principles and classroom implications.
Derewianka, B. (1990). Exploring How Texts Work. Primary English Teaching Association.
The classic teacher’s handbook on school genres, from recounts to arguments, written for primary classrooms.
Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Heinemann.
Practical, much-loved guide to teaching English learners through subject content, including genre-based writing support.
Caplan, N. A., & Farling, M. (2017). A dozen heads are better than one: Collaborative writing in genre-based pedagogy. TESOL Journal, 8(3), 564–581.
Shows the cycle at work in an intensive ESL course, with whole-class joint construction as its key stage.
Freedman, A. (1993). Show and tell? The role of explicit teaching in the learning of new genres. Research in the Teaching of English, 27(3), 222–251.
The best-known challenge to explicit genre teaching, from the North American New Rhetoric tradition.
ConnectionsSee it in the graph
- Genre Pedagogynot yet writtenThe cycle is the classroom heart of Sydney School genre pedagogy.
- ScaffoldingSupport is strongest in joint construction and handed over in independent writing.
- Register: Field, Tenor and ModeField-building and the move from spoken to written mode come from register theory.
- Theme and RhemeThematic progression is a common focus when deconstructing model texts.
- Zone of Proximal Developmentnot yet writtenJoint construction works in the space between what learners can do alone and with help.
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