writing instruction

I spend a lot of time interacting with teachers. Whether it is through social media, emails, Teach Along Course sessions or on the phone, they all say the same thing about writing instruction. “It just doesn’t make sense to ask a student in the early years, who can barely write a simple sentence, to write a complete text”.  Here are some of the things that I have heard:

“We skip to full pieces of text far too quickly.”

“I feel like my students just aren’t writing enough.”

“Asking all Foundati…

We have all known the feeling of frustration (and maybe helplessness) that comes with not really knowing how to get children writing.  Some kids just seem to 'get it' and will happily sit down to write a story or information report for us while others struggle along, unable to complete the task no matter how many times we go through the 'modelled, shared, guided and independent' cycle that we have been taught is the key to good writing instruction. 

When we try to figure out what we need to tea…

 Once we understand the need for explicit language and writing teaching, the question becomes, “Exactly what does this look like in a classroom?”  This post aims to begin to answer that question.  

Quality picture books.

A particularly engaging and effective method of building language is through the use of quality picture books.  This is by no means a new way to explore and contextualise grammar.  I highly recommend Joanne Rossbridge and Kathy Rushton’s book “Convers…