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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.
Latest from our Writing Blog
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.
December Work
We worked extremely hard throughout December to learn how to write Non-Chronological reports and the features that are required in order for the audience to be able to research quickly. We explored lots of published reports as well as information books in our reading lessons and looked closely at the precise vocabulary required for each topic area.
Here are some of our final products:
Writing
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