Writing
Throughout our school (including Nursery), we have adopted the Talk for Writing approach to teaching English writing. Talk for Writing enables children to imitate the key language they need for a particular topic orally before they try reading and analysing it. Through fun activities that help them rehearse the tune of the language they need, followed by shared writing to show them how to craft their writing, children are helped to write in the same style. Talk for Writing is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version. It builds on three stages of teaching:
1) Imitation - the children learn a text and the language they need
2) Innovation - the children adapt the model text with ideas of their own
3) Invention - the children create their own text using the language and skills that the model taught them.
In a typical lesson, you may see and hear children using story maps to learn chunks of text; you may encounter children deepening their understanding of the text through drama activities, and you will definitely hear and see children taking part in a variety of language activities and short burst of writing. This leads to the final journey of drafting, editing and writing their own compositions, which are often linked to the curriculum or written for a real purpose.
* Please see the link below to T4W Nursery planning including highlighted literacy coverage for the Autumn Term.
Grammar and Punctuation:
Grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are taught through English lessons as much as possible. Teachers plan to teach the required skills through the genres of writing that they are teaching, linking it to the genre to make it more connected with the intended writing outcome. Teachers sometimes focus on particular grammar and punctuation skills as stand-alone lessons, if they feel that the class need additional lessons to embed and develop their understanding or to consolidate skills.