At Whitstone we use the Talk for Writing approach for our writing. This approach enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects.

A key feature is that children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’, as well as close reading. The approach moves from dependence towards independence, with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully.

The key phases of the Talk for Writing process, enable children to imitate orally the language they need for a particular topic, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version. Further information on the process is outlined in more detail on the link below:

Sapling class have done an amazing job of learning the opening to our model text Journey to the Lonely Mountain, based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit using actions to support them. The children and Miss Mars were so proud of how hard and well they worked together that we recorded it for our parents and grown ups to see too. 
Feel free to join in with the actions at home too!

For Autumn 1 we used the Adventure at Sandy cover text to have a go at some suspense writing. This term we have looked at using different devices in our writing such as show not tell, using ellipses and our senses to describe.

Sapling have been really engaged with their writing tasks this first half term, even scaring the adults with some of their spooky sentences! We can't wait to see how their final stories are going to turn out!