At St Nicholas, we follow the Talk for Writing approach which is based on the principles of how children learn. During our units, we follow the 3 stages, Imitate, Innovate and Invent. The children imitate the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’ as well as close reading. The approach moves from dependence towards independence with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully. With the final stage, invent, enabling children to write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. All units culminate to the invent stage – this should reflect all of the skills that they have learnt over the course of the unit, including opportunities for self-reflection and editing to improve their work. Throughout the journey, children are given many opportunities to use drama, role-play, oral storytelling and discussion to engage their imagination before moving onto enhancing vocabulary, sentence structure and creative writing.
Throughout the Early Years and Key Stage 1 children are taught the key principles of writing and the skills are built upon throughout their school journey.