Pupils, teachers and governors are all excited about

Big Writing.

 What is Big Writing?

'Big Writing' is a completely new approach to the teaching of the skills of writing. It is highly effective for pupils from Reception to Key Stage 2, and has an immediate impact on writing standards.

Thousands of teachers are now using this approach across the country. It has been praised by HMI in their monitoring of schools, and its impact has been recognised in OFSTED reports.

The approach has also been found to be a huge motivator for boys, who are quickly found to become 'excited writers'.

Why do Big Writing?

One of our school improvement targets for the academic year 2008/2009 is ‘to further improve and develop writing’. In order to do this we at John of Rolleston, have started a project called ‘Big Writing’. If you have children at school then you may have heard them talking about this. ‘Big Writing’ is a teaching approach created in 2004 by Ros Wilson. Ros Wilson has introduced a new teaching methodology for raising standards in writing rapidly and effectively. The method is based on fast, fun and lively teaching of the ‘writing voice’ through oracy. It gives pupils confidence and the understanding to develop control of a higher level writing voice without requiring the understanding of technical knowledge of syntax and grammatical analysis. This is important as not all primary aged children are ready for the level of technical knowledge and understanding required to access higher order language in this way.

VCOP- Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers, Punctuation

The teaching of VCOP is one of the key strands of Big Writing. VCOP is focused teaching of the following:

Vocabulary = teach a wide range of ‘wow’ words, (ambitious

vocabulary);

Connectives = teach a wide range of words and phrases for

connecting thoughts, ideas, sentences etcetera;

Openers = teach a wide range of ways of opening sentences, including sequence words, linking words and phrases ;

Punctuation = teach a wide range of punctuation.

Punctuation Pyramid

The Punctuation Pyramid is a graphic representation for the range of punctuation that should be realistic for most children at each level of writing.

Each line represents a level and therefore use of a full stop only is Level 1 in punctuation, (not necessarily in writing overall) a full stop and a question mark are Level 2 and so on.

Pro-active teaching encourages children to be ‘having a go’ at levels they are not yet quite ready for and thus they go through an ‘emergent’ phase where the use may not be quite accurate. This phase must be praised and the child not made to feel they are ‘getting it wrong’. The teacher continues to model correct use of the punctuation and encourage increased understanding through use of strategies. The use of a wide range of punctuation is always celebrated. Teacher’s refer to it every time the pupils work and use the activities to embed the pyramid the ‘mind’s eye’ of all pupils.

Timing

Big Writing takes one and a half hours a week. This is split exactly in half by break time, creating two forty five minute sessions. In Year 1 Big Writing is a one hour session split into two thirty minute sessions. The first session is fast, fun, lively oracy-based activities. There is then ten minutes for the pupils to

consolidate their ideas’. The focus of the text type is introduced the day before.

Creating the right environment

As pupils enter the classroom at the beginning of ‘Big Writing’ there are three changes.

Lighting: The lighting is dimmed. Some of the main lights are turned off.

Aroma: A large aromatic candle may be placed at the front of the classroom. Children are encouraged to take ‘brain breaks’ whilst writing, they gaze at the candle flame, reflect and return to their work.

Music: Calming music is played. This is so quiet that it can only be heard if the classroom is silent.

These three environmental changes create an almost ‘electric’ silence that the children love.

Resources

Pupils have a special book and a special pen/ pencil for ‘Big Writing’ which are only used during Big Writing sessions.