Writing Pedagogy at a Local Primary School

This week I was able to take a 'mummy day' (I had leave owing from being over-timetable in term one), and was able to go and do a class visit in both my seven-year-old daughter's year two class, and my five-year-old son's soon-to-be new entrant class (he's doing the transition visits at present). Even though it was supposed to be a mummy visit, and for the first half hour I sat in my daughter's class purposefully disengaging from pedagogy or thinking about how I could use the strategies in my classroom, I eventually gave in. Who says we can't multitask and see the same situation through the eyes of the mummy and the teacher?

In both blocks I was able to see how writing was taught. Perfect lessons for me! To make it even more special, my year two teacher was teaching my daughter's class - the regular classroom teacher was off on release time. It's been 26 years since I've been in Tracy's class!

What I really liked about Tracy's lesson was that she started teaching writing skills by reading a story. This was exatly what @mrs_hyde had been talking about in a twitter chat on the Sunday morning immediately before the Tuesday. Writing skills must not be taught in isolation because that makes them meaningless. What's more meaningful? Writing punctuation marks on the whiteboard and stating definitions and effects or reading a story and seeing how they work in practise?

Yeah - in practise sounds good to me too.

Tracy spent about twenty minutes reading The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe and talking about the pictures, explaining vocabulary, and identifying different parts of the story (eg stories need to have a problem otherwise they're boring). She then handed out writing books and sent the children to their tables. They had a choice of tasks: either retell The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe in their own words, continue to work on their own imaginative story if they have one, or tell the story of their birthday (this task was especially for my daughter as it was her birthday that day).

I sat with my daughter's table and watched as they wrote. I provided assistance if the children asked for it, but I didn't want to interfere with their ideation and creative process. What I saw was really interesting. None of the children at this table retold The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe. They all had their own imaginative stories to tell. They all worked at different speeds. They all knew what to do if they didn't know what to do (eg go and get an 'editing card' if the words they wanted to use were too difficult for them to spell on their own). Children collaborated, bounced ideas off each other, or worked silently on their own - whatever worked for them.

As the children finished, they had one-on-one conferences with Tracy where she gave them feedback on their writing and identified a small number of their errors that they could work on next time.












In block two, I took my son to his class for one of his 'transition to school' lessons. Because this class has only just been started, there are currently eight children in this class. With new entrants the writing lesson was quite different - they were learning their letters.


In much the same way as Tracy taught writing, Angela taught writing to the new entrants. They started with a reading book where Angela pointed out how the different font size signified the difference between loud noises and quiet ones. She also taught punctuation while reading the story: "What is the name of the tall-stick with a spot under it? ... Right - exclamation mark. What does it do? ... Right - shows someone is shouting".

The children then went off into group reading time - and with eight children there are currently only two groups. A board on the wall indicated what tasks each group was to achieve, and when each group was to be with the teacher. After reading time, the children all came back to the mat, collected their chalkboard and chalk, and prepared for the writing lesson.

So by the time they were doing writing, they'd had three different ways of engaging with letters and sounds before they began to create them for themselves. Point to note.

The letter of the week is 'C', which Angela modelled, then the children copied as they were able. Lots of time was given for practise, and because the children were using chalkboards, they were able to rub out and start again as often as they liked. If they didn't like the 'C' they wrote, they could do another. If they filled their boards, they could start again.

For me, the biggest thing that I took away from my visit was seeing contextual writing teaching. Tracy brought the story alive with all her voices; Angela did the same. The children were engaged because the stories suited their level, age, and ability. The children had loads of time to see writing modelled before they were expected to go off and do their own. They weren't expected to take notes on exclamation marks or to hear teaching on sentence structure and then apply it. They were shown it. And that I really liked.