St Mary’s C of E Primary School

Burnham on Crouch

Talk 5 Writing

15th 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!