Writing

Writing

Our aim is to guide all children to develop into writers to entertain, to persuade and to inform. One approach used in school is the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach that we believe we can help children grow ideas and build confidence. Through multi-sensory and interactive teaching it enables children of all ages and abilities to learn to write a wide range of story/text types using various methods including:

  • Listening to a reading, a wide range of texts including stories, poetry and non-fiction
  • Exploring texts through drama and role play
  • Using pictures and story mapping to explore ideas
  • Building vocabulary and spelling strategies
  • Growing an understanding of grammatical concepts

At Jennett’s Park we try to engage our writers in a range of ways using different media, stories are not always written! Literacy Shed provides a selection of thought provoking and inspiring videos which our writers enjoy using to inspire their writing. Our writing sessions ensure that the children’s writing has a purpose and that an understanding of why writing is an important life skill! Writing genres include stories, letters, scripts, leaflets, spoken presentations, comic strips and posters to illustrate how writing is used for different purposes.

‘Talk for Writing’ is an approach to writing developed by the literacy specialist and writer, Pie Corbett. It uses high quality model texts to introduce the children to become familiar with and learn off by heart to then scrutinise as a reader and a writer. Story maps are used to explore how the writers have structured their ideas.

Process

Talk for Writing has three phases which work together to develop knowledge, confidence and independence in writing:

Imitation

During this phase the children learn a model text or part of a text using actions and story maps. The key to success for the children is that they internalise the text type through repetition and rehearsal. They explore the structure of the narrative and investigate the different characters, settings and events. We call this process “reading as a reader” which links closely to our Whole Class Guided Reading. They also begin to look closely at the language used and the effect this has on the reader. We call this process ‘read as a writer’.

Innovation

During this phase the teacher and the children begin to change aspects of the model text using their own ideas. They explore the text using different characters, settings or events and new ideas for descriptive language whilst sticking closely to the underlying structure.

Invention

During the invent week the children plan and write their own story based on the text type they have been learning. They experiment with the ideas and begin to explore their own style of writing using sentence types from the model text.