St Mary’s C of E Primary School Burnham on Crouch Talk 5 Writing 15 th June 2010

Why Talk 5?

• Traditionally very strong English results in the school.

• Gradually noticed a decline.

• Increase in Additional Needs throughout the school. • More children with poor speaking and listening skills.

• This seemed to be affecting writing in particular.

Key Elements

• Book-talk • Writer-talk • Storytelling and story-making • Word and language games • Role-play and drama

Starting out

• Introduced Talk 5 with Literacy SL in Yr 4 and also teacher new to Yr 6. • Briefly introduced to all staff • Parents were made aware of the approach • Identified 6 focus pupils in Yr 4 and Yr 6 who were not on track to make expected progress • However the approach was intended to benefit all pupils • Y4 and Y6 started work on 2 traditional tales.

• Simple stories with lots of repetition • The children loved it and the teachers were immediately captivated.

Getting everyone hooked!

• Full launch with whole staff early in spring term.

• Literacy consultant modelling the approach was very helpful.

• Staff wanted to see how it was done.

• Prove it!

• Staff questions about how it fitted in with everything else.

• Initial hesitation, but staff were very quickly hooked!

Storytelling

3 steps • Imitation • Innovation • Invention • Bumper Book of Storytelling KS1 and KS 2 by Pie Corbett

Class 4 - The Magic Paintbrush

• Learning a story (video) • Create a story map • Rewrite the original • Create own story map • Write own version

Developing the process

• Once hooked there was great enthusiasm from staff and children.

• Staff meetings used to gather ideas and suggestions.

• Class assemblies used to share the process with parents/carers.

• Displays around the school promoted the approach.

Future

• Agreed to use storytelling approach at least once a year.

• National storytelling week February 2011 will be a focus for the whole school.

• ‘St Mary’s Dragon’ to be used as a stimulus for different writing styles throughout the school.

• Yr 6 children to create a prompt sheet of the actions for all classes.

• Increase in role play and drama to be focus of schools literacy development. • Refining group reading to incorporate more ’book talk.’ • Wait for 2010 SAT’s results!