The long and winding writing road

Writing has always been the core subject that I have found the most intriguingly difficult to teach in the Primary curriculum. It seems to sit somewhere between the hierarchical nature of Maths and the holistic feel of reading. There is clearly a progression of knowledge in punctuation, grammar and sentence structure which feels like it should make the roadmap of teaching more straightforward. But then you have the idea that as well as this clear progression, you also need to incorporate the written word of authors whose work should be used as models for the inspiration of pupils. This part makes me draw parallels with the teaching of Art. Last year, I had many conversations with our Art lead about the difference between pupils being inspired by the work of a particular artist and their style and them mimicking that work. It was something we (especially I) wrestled with for a long time and at the end of the last academic year, I found myself having the same internal struggles again but this time in the context of writing. 

Some background

Writing has always been strong at my school in terms of outcomes. For the last two years we have recorded 93% of pupils meeting the expected standard or above at the end of key stage 2. It is worth noting that in the catchment that we operate in, that is no more impressive than other schools registering 50% for example. Our starting points tend to be above average and with solid teaching and a Year 6 team committed to relentless rigour, it is achievable. However, writing felt robotic at times with pupils dutifully learning and applying sentence construction, editing for sense and cohesion and being what I would describe as cautiously creative. 

During the 2023-24 academic year, we decided to focus our efforts on maximising the potential of the most able – the famed ‘Greater depth’. I am personally not a fan of the greater depth judgement but for the purposes of where we decided to put our weight, it did provide a useful metric. Thanks to the dedication of the Year 6 team and the fantastic support of Nicola Mansfield at PiXL, we were very pleased with the outcome of the project. We had more children writing at the greater depth standard and certainly more boys writing in a way that felt closer to their undoubted potential. Still though, it felt clunky. It felt that we were walking pupils through writing journeys one step at a time without a great deal of cohesion between the steps and certainly almost no connection with the world of writing that already existed around them in their class libraries. What’s more, teachers across the school, while enthusiastic about the outcomes their pupils were attaining, echoed our thoughts. One described writing units as ‘a bit of a slog’ and almost all agreed that they spent longer planning (by which they meant putting PowerPoints together) than they did for other subjects. 

So what did we do? 

We devised a cunning plan. Our first step was to be really clear about what the problem was / is that we were / are facing. That thinking boiled us down to the following: 

1. Teachers are spending too much time creating Powerpoints and not enough time talking, discussing and thinking about how to transmit complex ideas and connections between reading and writing to pupils.

2. Units of work feel laborious and lack dynamism and the opportunity for pupils to build up momentum (the feel you get when pupils are so engrossed in what they are creating that they are able to view their decisions at all times in the context of their overall intent.) 

3. Pupils do not understand well how to use what writers do to inspire their own ideas and content 

   
   

We felt that in order to set a clear path to solving these problems, we needed another set of eyes, an expert set. So, we enlisted the help of Writing consultant Tara Magee. There are a number of reasons we wanted to work with Tara. Firstly, her expertise and humility create the perfect environment for teachers and leaders wanting to improve to share their current understanding and thinking in a way that is both valued and challenged. Secondly, as with all external professional development, we wanted to commission someone who we knew would work with us to design an approach that currently did not exist rather than someone who would bring an existing product to us and show us how to apply it to our setting. Tara is an expert at this and during the day she spent with us, we felt like partners in the construction of something really exciting – albeit partners who ended the day feeling much smarter as a result of her input! 

At the end of that day, we had a skeleton outline of a writing unit mapped out and the beginnings of associated texts for each unit. This is part of what we ended up with:

The key features of it are:

1. We spend the immersion phase looking at how different authors achieve this intent in different ways 

2. We use the writer’s craft phase to practice using the different techniques that we have seen from the authors in phase 1 in the context of short bursts of writing – character descriptions, passage completions, etc. 

3. We embed these techniques into replicable sentence structures using the same principle of codifying sentence structure as Christopher Youles does in his excellent book: Sentence structures for creative writing. 

4. We use the planning phase to gather ideas and then to organise ideas. This is a distinction that Tara made with us and it really struck a chord

We then started to put the meat on the bones of what a medium-term plan would look like. We decided to add in a set of sentence structures which are what we call our core sentence structures. All teachers are expected to embed them into their modelling explicitly and all pupils are expected to know them at the end of the academic year. These structures are driven by the grammar and punctuation progression that the national curriculum sets out rather nicely for us. The medium term plan example for a Year 5 unit using Shakleton’s journey has another couple of features which are worth explaining. 

1. We start with the literary theme that we want to draw out during the unit. These themes are continually revisited and deepened throughout the child’s journey through our school and the idea is that they will dovetail really nicely with the themes that we draw out in our reading curriculum, making the link between reading and writing all the more obvious.

2. We then move to intent and we keep this in mind throughout the whole process. The intent is drawn from the theme 

3. We plan for how the authors achieve this intent – perhaps through character interaction, setting or any other means 

4. We embed this into codified  sentence structures where possible (the green text on the example below) and into overall author techniques (the purple text on the example below). The core sentence structures are also added in red as suggestions of which structures would fit well into that unit. 

Lesson starters need to be fix it and extend it sentences. – Constantly checking grammar for each year group.

Purple – Authorial Representations (To be taught using core sentence structures)

Red – Core Sentence Structure

Green – Author Inspired Sentence Structure

Year 5 Autumn 1 – Shackleton’s Journey
Theme	Driver Text	Purpose
Ambition	Shakleton’s Journey  Hidden Figures: Dorothy Vaughan (Supplementary Text) Derek Redmond 1992 Olympics (Supplementary Video)	To entertain
Intent (Macro)	To portray a character ambition for achievement and how other help them towards this.
Intent (Micro)	Physical effects showing support and collaboration between characters Setting that reflects a time when stereotypes had to be overcome Personification of the dilemma that the characters face
Immersion	Shakelton’s Journey Personification of the dilemma that the characters face Noun + Carefully Chosen Verb + Carefully Chosen Verb + Emotional Imagery Endurance creaked and groaned as she tried to free herself from the cruel grip of the ice Hidden Figures: Dorothy Vaughan Setting that reflects a time when stereotypes had to be overcome Setting + Feeling. Character Action + Where. Stereotypical Differences between Characters. It was nearly 40°C and extremely uncomfortable. Dorothy Vaughan was sorting socks in a room full of washing machines at Camp Pickett, Virginia. The socks belonged to American soldiers who were training at Camp Pickett before going to war. Derek Redmond 1992 Olympics Physical effects showing support and collaboration between characters Derek’s physical obstacle and his feelings towards this and how he carries on. Man helps Derek despite attempting to be stopped by attendants, they continue the race together.
Writers Craft	Setting the Scene Nowhere in the world + More + More + Where Nowhere in the world was more ambitious, more determined than the decks of the HMS Endurance Setting + Feeling. Character Action + Where. Stereotypical Differences between Characters. It was nearly 40°C and extremely uncomfortable. Dorothy Vaughan was sorting socks in a room full of washing machines at Camp Pickett, Virginia. The socks belonged to American soldiers who were training at Camp Pickett before going to war. Outside Physical Effects Reassuring yourself – 2x Physical Actions + Thought He steadied his hands, regulated his breathing and told himself it would all be alright.  Derek’s physical obstacle and his feelings towards this and how he carries on. Man helps Derek despite attempting to be stopped by attendants, they continue the race together. Action Actions Over Time – 3x Subjects The next few days went quickly. Jill collected firewood. Dan set about building a shelter and Tom spent his time keeping lookout. Noun + Carefully Chosen Verb + Carefully Chosen Verb + Emotional Imagery Endurance creaked and groaned as she tried to free herself from the cruel grip of the ice

Our pilot

Our next step is to run our pilot units. We have decided to run pilots in Year 2, 5 and 6 in order to get feedback from key stage 1 as well as 2.

In the next blog post in this series, we will write about how the pilots went and the inevitable adaptations we need to make to out plan going forward!