Writing at St Michael's
At St Michael's, we use Talk for Writing strategies as the basis for our writing curriculum.
Talk for Writing is an approach to teaching writing that encompasses a three-stage pedagogy: ‘imitation’ (where pupils learn and internalise model texts, to identify transferrable ideas and structures), ‘innovation’ (where pupils use these ideas and structures to co-construct new versions with their teachers), and ‘independent application’ (where teachers support pupils to create original texts independently). These tasks aim to improve writing ability by giving pupils an understanding of the structure and elements of written language. By having a repetoire of known, familiar stories, children are more able to write new texts fluently by basing them on known structures.
The three stages (immitate, innovate and independent application) are a 'journey', and are taught over a 2-3 week period. In each half term, there will be a natrraitiev (story) journey and a non-fiction journey (these could be persuasive letter writing, recounts, information text writing and so on).
As a buffer between these journeys, we give the children the opportunity to either learn some poetry or have a 'creative writing opportunity' whereby they have more flexibility ove what they write. These opportunities last a week.
Spelling strategies, vocabulary development, specific grammar and punctuation objectives are all taught alongside these journeys; either a specific lessons or as part of the model text.