Several FVWL practitioners had the opportunity to participate in a series of writing webinars live streamed from Australia. These sessions highlighted approaches to teaching five different text types. Members of the RIC Literacy Workstream will meet in the new year to decide how best to take this forward. In the meantime, there are some “headlines” below.

Related resources are saved in the RIC Writing Team. If you wish to be added to the RIC Writing Team please email: CLjadam@glow.sch.uk

 

Main Messages

A central thread running through all of the webinars was the importance of explicitly teaching writing and a gradual release of responsibility – moving from modelling to shared and interactive to independent writing.

Modelling →	Shared & Interactive →	Independent
To →	With →	By

 

Text Types

Three broad areas: persuasive; informative; imaginative.

Nine specific text types fall into the three broad areas: discussion; response; exposition; report; procedure; explanation; recount; description; narrative

It is not recommended to teach all 9 text types in one academic year! Rather, comprehensive coverage of 3 text types per year is advised – with a suggested five or six weeks spent teaching each text type.

 

The Describing Bubble

A tool that can be used for many writing tasks is “the describing bubble” (replicated here Describing Bubble) – and it is useful to have this in poster form/on the whiteboard so that it can be referred to often. This supports children and young people to develop paragraphs.

Further details available from the RIC Writing Team – email to join. (CLjadam@glow.sch.uk)