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At Monkwray Junior School, we strive for enjoyment and achievement whilst developing key Literacy skills, which can be used across all curriculum areas. Our pupils are given opportunities to learn and revisit skills to enable them to become confident, independent writers.
This year, we have begun using the Talk 4 Writing principles: imitate, innovate, invent.
We begin each unit of work with a Have a Go piece of writing, where children have the chance to write in a particular genre and show the skills that they already have. Children will be ‘hooked’ into the genre using an experience, visual stimuli, a book, or drama.
Following this, teachers set targets related to structure, vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and spelling. Children are then exposed to a model text which they orally learn, map out and explore the vocabulary and structure.
Children then use drama techniques and teacher modelling to contribute to shared writing through the Imitate phase. At this point, children may choose to follow the shared writing closely to develop confidence or may begin to put their own creative twist on their work whilst showcasing the key skills modelled.
Once the Imitate phase is complete, children then begin to plan and draft an ‘Innovate’ text, which allows them to independently apply and adapt their skills in a new context. During this phase, children are encouraged to share, celebrate and improve their work through self and peer assessment against their unit targets. Children are given opportunities to edit and finally redraft and publish their final draft.
Click the Writing at Monkwray button below to find out more about Writing in each year group
Latest from our Writing Blog
Publishing our Final Drafts
We have been working hard to improve our editing skills. We publish our final drafts in our orange, continuity books. We are very proud of our hard work.
Writing Hooks
To inspire our writing, all kinds of wonderful things have happened so far this year in Year 3:
We became palaeontologists in training to write non-chronological reports about prehistoric species.
We discovered a Treasure Tree in our school’s front garden. This inspired us to write stories about the consequences of taking the treasure.
We made magical giggling potions and wrote instructions.
We were given Pebble Pals to care for.
Paddington arrived in our classroom so we discussed his journey and the reasons why he might have made it. We then had a go at writing journey stories.
Library lesson
In literacy we visited the school library to talk about our favourite authors, find books and research from non-fiction books.
Journey to the monster’s lair
As part of our talk for writing unit, Defeating the Monster tales, we went on our own journey
towards a monster’s lair. We used our imaginations to decide what each obstacle each of the apparatus could represent. The children came up with some fantastic ideas, such as:
* tiptoeing over cliff edges
* skidding through a falling cave
* walking over a tightrope above shark infested waters
* jumped in to a raging cyclone
Defeating the Monster tale – Story sequencing through Drama – March 2021
As part of our defeating the monster unit in talk for writing, we are exploring the story of George and the Dragon. We learned the model text and then produced freeze frames for each paragraph to help us to understand the structure needed in the story.
We used pictures of our freeze frames to help us rewrite the story in the correct structure.
Writing
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