The first aim of WRITE was to develop teachers' subject knowledge and pedagogical expertise. Many teachers admit to insecurities in their subject knowledge in literacy, particularly with regards to grammar. This means that they are not always in a position to explicitly teach children the skills that they need to improve their writing. As a result of this, teachers can become reliant on directions from others, and commercial programmes, which they implement without really understanding why or how they are meant to work. If teachers are provided with the subject knowledge they need, they are empowered to make choices about what and how to teach to best meet the needs of the children in their care.
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Once the teachers had developed their understanding of the subject and a range of pedagogical approaches, the onus was on them to decide how they could best use this in their own classroom, for their own learners. They were free to adapt and improve models with which they were presented, and they were encouraged to take risks, indeed, some lessons taught were not particularly successful. They were, though, able to reflect on why this was, to discuss their experiences and revise and extend their thinking. In this way, models of practice were developed and shared within the group and teachers were empowered to be the agents of change in their classrooms, rather than trying to implement others' thinking.
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Communication is a collaborative process and if they are to communicate effectively, children need to be taught the conventions of this process and to understand the expectations that their collaborators will bring. This means that they need explicit teaching of forms/ genres/ registers.
At the same time, though, communication, particularly writing is a creative and personal activity and children need to have the freedom to experiment without penalty, to develop their own voices and to make their own choices.
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In teaching young writers (and speakers!), a balance between the two must be struck: if the teaching is too directed, the writing becomes mechanical. Without ownership and purposefulness that the child buys into the child becomes disengaged. As one child, when asked why we write said, 'We write so you can mark it.' It is in the writing where they make their own choices that they truly learn to craft language.
On the other hand, though, if children are not given any explicit instruction, only those who have access to a broad range of texts outside the classroom, and who are able to absorb the patterns in what they read, will have access to a range of genres and registers.
In the frantic drive for ever faster progress and ever higher levels, all too often, technique is prioritised over purpose and communication. The objective for the creation of a text is to demonstrate the use of a particular feature (usually "connectives") rather than to communicate a message, and the reason for redrafting work is to 'uplevel' it, rather than to make it clearer, or more exciting, or more informative.
This creates a warped view of why we write, i.e. to get levels, and as levels (or grades, or performance descriptors - whatever you want to call them) are only meaningful in the context of school, children struggle to see the true value of developing skills. This is, in some cases, compounded by the 'count the bullets' approach to APP and assessment: child A has used the word 'moreover, therefore he must be a level X, irrespective of the fact that it's misplaced or that the writing makes little sense.
If children have a real purpose for writing, a message that they want to communicate, we can then provide them with the tools to make that communication more effective, and they will be motivated to use them.
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The 'traditional' approach to grammar teaches us that there are a set of rules, and that these rules must be followed. Often, these rules are illustrated with made up sentences which have been made up to demonstrate the rule, and children are then asked to demonstrate their understanding of those rules by either underlining things in more made-up sentences or making up their own sentences.
A common concern of teachers is that a child 'writes like they speak' , but the teacher finds it difficult to define exactly what it is that makes it that way, or what the child should do to make it 'more written'. Functional grammar provides us with the language to explain this, to ourselves and to children
If teachers are going to help pupils to write in a variety of genres, they need to understand, and have the language to explain, how those genres work. We made use of the research of David Rose and Jim Martin, who catalogue and classify the types of genres typically demanded in school and, where necessary, used this language to describe additional genres, for example, different types of letter, which were part of the teachers' curricula.
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This learning, as is evident in the case studies, was enormously powerful with teachers often finding that they had been asking children to create an example of one genre based on their modelling of another.
In talking to children about their work, teachers often find themselves saying that ideas are confused, or jumbled, but without being able to explain how that has happened. Genre analysis and the language of the stages and phases of the text, provides the means to make this visible, and for the child, therefore, to improve.
Writing Journals have been well established in a number of Buckinghamshire schools, thanks to the work of Simon Wrigley and Jenifer Smith on the Teachers as Writers project, now the National Writing Project. These journals, and the approach that accompanies them, provide a space for children to 'have a go' without judgement or penalty but with the opportunity to share and reflect on their writing with a trusted reader. This approach has had a huge impact on writers at all levels (from year 1 to postgraduate!) and, as the case studies demonstrate, not only does the 'quality' of children's writing improve, more importantly, the engagement with writing and motivation to write is hugely enhanced.
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The approach developed by Storytelling Schools is one which has the power to transform classrooms, and children's attitude to learning and literacy. In the process of learning to tell stories, children develop their understanding of the structure and organisation of texts and develop their language skills. They develop their ideas about texts and are supported in bridging the gap between telling their stories and writing them. Although the term 'storytelling' implies narrative fiction, the approach works equally well when applied to all areas of the curriculum, and all types of texts.
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