This year across the school, we have begun to explore ‘Talk4Writing‘, which is an innovative approach to developing speech and teaching creative and non-fiction writing that is fun, engaging and motivating for children. Following on from our Literacy Week showcase last Friday, we are very excited to share with you, our series of amazing Talking Text videos, which we have recorded across the school. These will be posted weekly on our blog. We hope you enjoy watching them as much as we do!
What is Talk4Writing?
Talk4Writing is an approach developed by Pie Corbett that helps children to speak the language of texts before they attempt to write it. It uses high quality model texts to introduce them to different story/text types which they then learn off by heart as a ‘Talking Text’. A class story map, consisting of pictures and some key words, prompts the children as they retell the text aloud as a group. Repeating this many times, they begin to internalise it.
Together as a class, the children scrutinise these texts with a writer’s critical eye. They learn the underlying structures and the process of planning and create their own story maps. They also learn about the key strategies for creating interesting characters and settings, and how to use a range of sentence types to create different effects. Multi-sensory activities, such as role-play, hot seating and puppet theatre help build children’s confidence and linguistic ability, and deepen their understanding of the text.
Finally, the children go on to write their own stories and non-fiction texts. They experiment with ideas and begin to explore their own style of writing, using sentence types from the model text. With the class writing together, the process becomes a joint adventure. Children support each other and the results are exciting!
The Talk4Writing approach builds children’s language knowledge orally, which in turn develops and enhances their writing skills as they progress through the school. Starting in our Early Years classes, Talk4Writing begins at this early age as storytelling and early mark making. Move through each year group and, as more writing emerges, the process increasingly develops. Each week as you view each post, take a look at the quality of writing in our lower and upper year groups, and observe all of features of writing that they are able to include. The growth in development of children’s writing in these short primary years is truly phenomenal!