Implementation- How do we teach writing at Repton Primary School? 

Reading and writing are essential skills in all of our lives because we use them every day. Here at Repton Primary School, we work very hard at ensuring our English lessons are purposeful and interesting; teaching our children the important skills that will make them fantastic readers, amazing writers and successful learners. These skills are vital for all subjects in the curriculum because they all have some form of reading and writing in them. We purposefully plan in opportunities for reading and writing in other subjects so the children are transferring their skills.
 

Talk 4 Writing

We follow Pie Corbett’s Talk 4 Writing model to teach English throughout the school. When planning our English lessons we follow this 3 step model - innovate, imitate and invent.

Innovate- 

Engaging texts are chosen which the children familiarise themselves with by completing a range of comprehender activities.  New vocabulary is learnt that we ‘magpie’ from great authors to use and improve our writing.

 

Imitate-

A combination of both modelled and shared writing is used during this stage. Modelled writing is used as an effective teaching strategy for this stage so the children can see and hear how a ‘writer’ (teacher) thinks and makes decisions about sentence structure, vocabulary choices and punctuation in order to have an effect on the reader.

Invent-

The final step is for the independent application where the children invent their own text following the structure of the model text and the one completed together during the imitate stage. The final piece of writing is called the hot write.

Through marking, we ensure that the children know what they have achieved well and what they need to do to improve and progress their writing. Quality time is given in lessons for the children to be able to read the marking comments and then improve some of their writing.

For extra information on Talk 4 Writing please click on this link-

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/about/

You can also watch Pie himself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvJZD-cplg - This is the imitate phase.

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/portfolio-items/video-pie-demonstrating-talk-for-writing/ Pie demonstrating the different elements of Talk 4 Writing!

Spellings

At Repton Primary we use Superhero Spellings to teach spellings patterns in KS2. This approach follows on from Monster Phonics, which is taught in EYFS and KS1.  Superhero Spellings follows a three-step model of: Learn, Build, Show. This is used in class to cover the spelling objectives for each year group and spellings are also sent home for children to practise. We use spelling shed to give children access to their targeted spelling pattern. This is through games and quizzes. We celebrate children practising these in class with leader boards and in our whole school assembly leader board.

Our English curriculum is at the heart of what we teach and learn at Repton Primary School.