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Why teach this unit?

This is a wonderfully versatile project and one you can use time and again. This is because children simply change what it is they want to put at the end of this title stem: A story about… my dad, A story about… my friend Charlie, A story about… Spiderman, A story about… the Gruffalo, or even A story about… Monty the monstertruck! 

Children love telling others stories about the people they know and like outside school. They may have overheard or been told a funny or a serious anecdote about someone, or perhaps remember something they did together, and this is a great opportunity to entertain or inform others about it, make a record of something to look back on, and maybe also to express affection for someone or something important to them. Making a book about someone who belongs to the wider circle of family friends and acquaintances offers children extra possibilities for making links between home and school and for writing about what they know (Young et al. 2022). For this reason, their book may contain elements of both personal narrative (memoir) and information.

Alternatively, this project is an opportunity for children to write their own ‘fan fiction’ by taking a character from their popular culture and using them in their own story. This helps introduce children to the idea of intertextuality – that your stories can be based on others you know or love (Young & Ferguson 2023).

In every story there hides a hundred other stories

Why teach this unit?

The beauty of this unit is that it works with any high-quality text or any set of books your pupils love. If we want reading to raise the quality of children’s writing, we should give them the choice over the books they might want to take from in their writing. It’s important that we teach writing and reading in a connected way and so show children how all writers will use their favourite literature and other reading to influence their writing (Young & Ferguson 2023). When writers do this, it’s called intertextuality. 

Intertextuality is the idea that writing (and therefore writers) will be influenced or inspired by things read, watched or heard. We must first let our young apprentice writers know that this is an utterly natural thing for writers to do and then encourage them to do it for themselves. 

Children don’t only show their comprehension when they write in response to the books they’re reading; they give something of themselves to the text too. A fair exchange of ideas is made between the reader and what’s read. When this happens, we believe it’s evidence of children achieving the greater-depth standard.

We are delighted to announce the publication of our latest book: How To Teach Writing.

How To Teach Writing is a collection of articles that are designed to slowly guide you through the principles and practices of world-class writing teaching. 

Importantly, we cover quality writing teaching from the EYFS-KS2. It doesn’t matter what writing approach you use, you’ll find any of our articles useful. You can pick and choose the articles that you think will be most helpful and interesting to you and which best fit your particular context. We’ve made sure that each article can stand alone. In this way, they are perfect for staff meetings. They allow you to focus on areas of writing teaching that matter most to your school.

If you’re planning to introduce our whole approach into your classroom or school then we can recommend reading the articles in the order we’ve organised them. By the end, you’ll be well placed to deliver world-class evidenced-based writing teaching. Exciting!

Above all, we wanted these articles to be short, engaging and utterly practical. We want you to feel like a better writing teacher after reading them and enacting the advice that’s shared. 

• Part 1 is designed to give you a really good grounding in what the research says about delivering evidence-based writing teaching for EYFS, KS1 and KS2. It also shares the research around ensuring a good connection between reading and writing. Finally, we share best practice when it comes to working with children with SEND.
• Part 2 helps you know how to plan successful units and individual writing lessons. 
• Part 3 gives short practical advice on a whole host of important writerly topics. Hopefully, you’ve browsed our contents page to see just how much is covered!

Individual license – £10.95

School/Institution license – £54.75

or FREE for members

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person – Louis Fischer

Why teach biography?

This writing project will show children how they can document the lives of people in their communities. They will discover how the lives of ordinary people they know can be sources of great historical, social and personal interest – not only to themselves as the writer but to others too. All people’s lives are interesting, but we don’t always realise it ourselves. Everyone in our society has a story to tell, and by asking the right questions and sharing these stories publicly, children learn that they can give a voice to those people who would never otherwise have had an audience.

Biography writing has strong elements of memoir, although it will be about other people that the writer knows personally or has heard of through family members, friends or the community. At their very best, biographies can carry within them great opportunities for poetic description and rich anecdote. One of the great benefits of this writing project is that the writer can bring in and celebrate stories that can strengthen and enhance the sense of community and connection inside the classroom (Young et al. 2022). There may well be gains, too, for the person being interviewed and written about.

A good biography topic creates the possibility for reflection, empathy or a shared understanding of a person or an experience. Children will come to understand the role biographers have in documenting and preserving people’s past.

We are delighted to announce the publication of our latest book: How To Teach Writing.

In How To Teach Writing, Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson present thirty essential articles which will revolutionise any EYFS-KS2 classroom. From the authors who transformed their own ineffective writing teaching, this guide delivers actionable strategies and evidence-based practices.

Discover the 14 principles of world-class writing teaching, learn about the reading/writing connection, understand how to support children with SEND, and unpick what assessment statements are really asking. 

This book is also packed with some amazing ‘How to…‘ guides including: 

• How to plan an effective writing lesson
• How to plan a purposeful and effective writing unit
• How to deliver an effective grammar and sentence-level lesson
• How to do effective modelled and shared writing
• How to teach children to read as writers
• How to help children generate great writing ideas
• How to help children plan their writing
• How to help children revise 
• How to help children proof-read their writing
• How to establish success criteria effectively
• How to give effective verbal feedback
• How to arrange your written marking
• How to assess pupils’ writing
• How to develop children’s oral language and vocabulary use in the writing classroom
• How to use focus groups when teaching writing
• How to set up personal writing projects

This book is the key to achieving great results whilst also fostering a love of writing. It’s time to redefine your writing teaching. Start your journey today.

Individual license – £10.95

School/Institution license – £54.75

or FREE for members

We’re delighted to announce that we’re collaborating with HFL Education and UK Literacy Association’s School Of The Year Elmhurst Primary School to bring you our new training: Getting Writing Right: What the Evidence Says.

Join us for a day of learning!

About this course

Held at Elmhurst Primary School in London, this training will equip teachers and leaders to understand what the latest evidence and research concerning quality writing teaching is.   

The day will consider how schools can ensure that all children make maximised progress in writing.  The essential features of writing teaching will be discussed, such as: 

• How to set rigorous writing goals
• How to plan a class writing project with the greater-depth standard as the standard
• What’s involved in delivering an effective writing lesson
• How to deliver sentence-level and grammar instruction
• How to connect reading and writing profitably.

Learning Outcomes

• Have a secure understanding of what the evidence and research says around effective writing teaching
• Be given practical ideas and strategies for writing teaching to use in the primary classroom immediately
• Be equipped with greater confidence and subject knowledge concerning the teaching of writing

Additional Information

Lunch & refreshments will be provided.

Schools will also receive a school license (worth £54.75) to our latest eBook How To Teach Writing.

This free handbook addresses some of the major aspects of teaching writing. The aim is to create an invaluable reference guide for all teachers. We hope to update this handbook every year to take account of the latest research and thinking. We would like this handbook to support teachers in developing sound subject knowledge and exceptional classroom practice. We have tried to make the research as accessible as possible. The handbook includes:

• Over 600 research entries covering the major aspects of developing students as writers. 
• Short abstracts and keyword tags to help teachers find the research they are looking for.
• An analysis of the analysis and what it is the best performing writing teachers do that makes the difference.
• A chapter dedicated to each of the 14 principles of world-class writing teaching.
• Research on the early teaching of writing including compositional development, phonics, encoding, spelling, letter formation and handwriting.
• Extended entries on major topics such as speaking and listening, reading/writing connection, multilingualism, special educational needs and disabilities, and social and emotional disorders.
• Focused chapters on the affective needs of student writers, including: self-efficacy (confidence), self-regulation (competence and independence), agency, motivation and writer-identity.
• Essential literature and suggested reading offered at the end of each chapter.

This handbook is a useful resource for anyone interested in developing world-class writing teaching. Teachers should find what is shared within these pages utterly interesting, informed and helpful.

We have done our best with this third edition to cover many aspects of writing teaching in the best way we can. We have provided a variety of research, from different disciplines, and from a variety of perspectives. We’ve tried to provide a balance between the very latest emerging research and classic studies which contain profound insights and have stood the test of time. If you think some important research entries are missing, then please contact us. You can contact us through our website at: http://www.writing4pleasure.com/contact

New to this third edition:

• A *NEW* chapter on Children’s views on writing, being writers and writing teaching.
• New research studies related to teachers’ perspectives on writing teaching and initial teacher education.
• A significant number of additional studies on the subject of writing motivation and writer-identity. 
• Major additions to the special educational needs chapter. 
• New studies on the subject of teaching children to plan and revise their compositions.
• Studies on the importance of having a reassuringly consistent approach to teaching writing in the early years, primary, and in secondary schools.
• Additional papers on the importance of establishing children’s transcriptional skills. 
• Substantial new studies on pursuing purposeful and authentic class writing projects.
• A new section devoted to research on children writing at home
• New research on grammar teaching, teaching at the sentence-level, and developing children’s vocabulary in the context of the writing classroom.
• Further additions to verbal feedback and delivering pupil-conferencing.
• Significant new studies and literature added to the reading/writing connection chapter.

A class writing project is an opportunity for the whole class to learn more about a type of writing. It’s also where teachers can explicitly teach children about the writer’s process. It’s important to point out that not every single class writing project needs to go through all of the processes shared above. Teachers should use their own professional judgement to plan their own class writing projects. For example, a teacher could feel it appropriate to remove a particular process based on their class’ needs and the amount of time they want to spend on a particular project. However, with that said, to routinely omit certain processes would certainly result in children receiving an incomplete writerly apprenticeship and would inevitably lead to writing underachievement.

The link between class writing projects and the KS2 STA writing framework statements

Below, we will show how the journey of a class writing project can naturally attend to all aspects of the greater-depth standard.

On the first day of a new class writing project, you will want to establish the purpose and potential audience for the writing. You want to establish a publishing goal with your class [LINK]. This doesn’t take long and so for the rest of the session, children can work on their personal writing project [LINK].

For a few lessons, you will want to read as writers [LINK]. It’s important to remember that if your project is to write some spooky stories, then it’s a good idea to read lots of great spooky stories to see how it can be done! While undertaking this kind of reading, you’ll want to establish the product goals (success criteria) for the project with the class (see this LINK for more details). We recommend spending about 20-30 minutes on this each day. That way, the rest of the lesson can be devoted to children working on their personal writing projects. This ensures children are getting a sustained period in which to write every day.

When you and your class have read lots of great mentor texts, and you’ve established your product goals for the project, you’re in a position to generate your writing ideas. One of the best ways to do this is through an Ideas Party [LINK]. By having an ideas party, you can ensure that every child in your class produces an independent piece of writing by the project’s end.

Modelling a planning technique to your class before inviting them to use that technique for their own writing idea is one device which can help children build cohesion [LINK]. We can certainly recommend keeping these plans and letting moderators know that this is one cohesive device your pupils have used. I can also recommend asking your class to do their planning on a separate piece of paper and not in their English book. That way, they can easily consult their plans as they are drafting.

At the drafting stage, we recommend teaching through the principles of SRSD instruction [LINK]. This way, children can see how grammatical structures and other literary features (what we like to call craft moves) have been used by their teacher before being invited to use and apply that craft move to their own writing that day.

We find that once children have drafted their compositions, they are in a position to reconsider and otherwise re-envision their writing through – revision. This is an opportunity to model more sophisticated craft moves to children before inviting them to give the move a go on their ‘trying things out page’. If they like what they’ve produced, they can add it to their manuscript – but they don’t have to! Moderators love seeing this because the child has provided evidence for certain craft moves but have made the authorial decision not to include it in their final manuscript. The behaviour of a greater-depth writer.

In addition to delivering specific revision craft move sessions, we recommend that teachers meet with their class, in groups, over a few days. This gives them an opportunity to reflect on whether their composition has met the product goals that were established for the project. This gives them time to work on their manuscript a little more – or at the very least use their ‘trying things out page’ to show how they could have applied certain product goals to their writing. While you meet with these groups, the rest of your class can be working on their personal writing projects [LINK].

The National Curriculum and the STA assessment statements are heavily weighted towards accuracy and adherence to conventions. It makes sense then that this is where a teacher will have to devote the majority of their instruction time. To help children try and obtain as close to 100% accuracy as they are capable, we recommend breaking proof-reading down into small and manageable chunks. You can read more about this here. The idea is that once children have completed the aspect of proof-reading that’s been modelled to them by their teacher that day, they can work on their personal writing project. This frees the teacher up to work with children who may be struggling the most.

Publishing is a great opportunity to focus on children’s handwriting in context. How often do we have pupils produce beautiful handwriting for us when they complete their handwriting worksheets, but it goes out the window once they are undertaking composition? Publishing is a great opportunity to give children live verbal feedback and additional instruction in the aspects of handwriting they need to work on most.

Please read this section carefully as there are important things to consider

• Class writing projects are the perfect place for introducing and teaching children about the writer’s process. However, it’s crucial to remember that, over time, writers develop their own idiosyncratic ways of writing (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a, 2022, 2023). Therefore, we must provide opportunities for children to play around with these processes. We believe this is best done by ensuring children have opportunities to pursue their own personal writing projects once they have finished what they’ve been asked to do that day for the class project (see LINK for more details). This way, they can learn about the recursive nature of the writer’s process and how they can move between these different processes. It’s also a place for them to learn about other processes such as: abandoning, reimagining, returning and updating. We have to say that through their personal writing, children can produce some of their most creative and innovative work. It’s a great place to look for elements of the greater-depth standard.

On the PDF version of this article, we provide two examples of what a project plan can look like. However, it’s important to remember the following:

• Teachers should use their own professional judgement to plan their own class writing projects. For example, they should either add or remove sessions based on their own class’ needs and the amount of time they want to spend on a project. You can read more about this here.
• The more time spent on a project, the better the final outcomes will be. If you rush a project, you get rushed outcomes.
• It’s important to remember that once a child has completed the goal for that writing session, they should know that they can work on their personal writing project for the rest of the lesson [LINK]. 
• Remember, this is not the only writing children should produce. Children should also have their personal writing project writing, their writing in the wider curriculum subjects, and the writing they produce in their reading lessons.

We need to acknowledge that writing is really really hard. It’s probably the most cognitively demanding thing students have to do while they are at school. As this diagram, taken from our publication The Science Of Teaching Primary Writing, shows, pupils have to draw on at least thirteen different cognitive resources to write well. 

These include: Knowledge of their writing environment; knowledge of their audience and their needs as readers; their content knowledge; goal knowledge; genre knowledge; their reading abilities; their knowledge of the writer’s process; grammar knowledge; sentence-level knowledge; oral language and listening comprehension; vocabulary knowledge; transcriptional knowledge, and knowledge of their own emotional and affective writerly needs.

Due to this complexity, it’s important that secondary school teachers utilise evidence-based writing instruction. This article looks to share such practices. To help me, I’m going to discuss the ‘effect-sizes’ taken from the meta-analyses research with you (Hillocks 1986; Graham & Perin 2007; Koster et al. 2015; Graham et al. 2023). For those who might not be familiar with the term, a meta-analysis is where a researcher will group many scientific studies on a particular subject in order to identify recurring patterns of effectiveness. Now, anything above a +0.4 is generally considered by researchers to have a significant positive effect on children’s writing performance.

Explicitly teach students the writing processes (+0.47)

Explicitly teaching pupils about the writing processes and how to use them in a self-regulating way is shown to be highly effective practice. The writing processes include: generating ideas, planning, drafting, re-reading, revising, proof-reading and publishing.

Articles and resources to support:

• The components of an effective writing unit [LINK]

Pursue purposeful and authentic class writing projects (+0.92)

Pupils’ writing outcomes are improved if they engage in challenging inquiry and extended class writing projects where they write for authentic purposes and real and varied audiences.

Articles and resources to support:

• Establishing publishing goals for class writing projects [LINK]

Deliver idea generation and planning instruction (+0.49)

Early on in a writing project, the best writing teachers teach lessons focused on composition to ensure quality. This means teachers give pupils specific instructional time to generate writing ideas and plan their writing.

Articles and resources to support:

• No more: I don’t know what to write… Lessons that help children generate great writing ideas [LINK]
• No more: I don’t know what to write next… Lessons that help children plan great writing [LINK]

Deliver writing strategy instruction (+0.76)

Teaching ‘craft knowledge’ through ‘self-regulation strategy development instruction’ is probably the most validated teaching practice a teacher of writing can employ. The key here is teaching a single strategy before inviting students to apply that taught strategy to their writing that day. The same concept applies to grammar teaching (+0.77) and teaching at the sentence-level (+0.73).

Articles and resources to support:

• Getting writing instruction right [LINK]
• The components of effective grammar instruction [LINK]
• The components of effective sentence-level instruction [LINK]

Balance composition and transcription instruction (+0.71)

Early on in a writing project, the best writing teachers teach lessons focused on composition to ensure quality. Towards the end of a project, they move their focus towards teaching about transcription to ensure accuracy. This includes, for pupils who need it, receiving spelling, handwriting and/or typing instruction.

Articles and resources to support:

• No more: ‘My pupils can’t edit!’ A whole-school approach to developing proof-readers [LINK]
• The research on handwriting [LINK]
• The research on spelling [LINK]
• If in doubt, circle it out! how to create a class of independent spellers [LINK]

Read as writers (+0.46)

When students read and discuss mentor texts in the writing classroom – texts which match the kind of texts they are actually going to go on to write themselves, they perform better.

Articles and resources to support:

• Reading in the writing classroom: A guide to finding, writing and using mentor texts with your class [LINK]

Give feedback (+0.46)

Excessive written feedback or extensive error correction often has little to no positive impact on young writers’ academic progress. Indeed, negative comments and heavy marking repeatedly result in pupils feeling less enthusiasm for writing, writing less, and having a low opinion of themselves as writers. In turn, this results in students doing the minimum to get by.

However, when pupils receive short, positive, and focused verbal feedback from their teachers while they are actually engaged in writing, they revise their compositions to a significantly higher standard. It’s the combination of personalised instruction and immediate verbal feedback that appears to be the reason why pupil-conferencing is such a highly effective practice.

Articles and resources to support:

• A guide to pupil-conferencing with 3-11 year olds: Powerful feedback & responsive teaching that changes writers [LINK]
• A quick guide to class sharing and Author’s Chair [LINK]

Set writing goals (+0.44)

Goal setting involves setting:

1. Publishing goals (children knowing who they are giving their writing to at the end of a project)
2. Product goals (what they need to do or include to write a great piece)
3. Process goals (little deadlines which are set along the way to publishing)

Articles and resources to support:

• Establishing publishing goals for class writing projects [LINK]
• Getting success criteria right for writing: Helping 3-11 year olds write their best texts [LINK]
• Trust the process: setting process goals [LINK]

Be a writer-teacher (+0.41)

When students can observe their teacher writing, it assists them in successfully producing their own compositions. Students can also act as writer-teachers. This includes observing and learning from how their peers write successfully too.

Articles and resources to support:

• What does effective ‘shared writing’ look like? [LINK]
• A quick guide to class sharing and Author’s Chair [LINK]

The task of teaching writing to adolescents is undeniably challenging, as it demands the orchestration of numerous cognitive resources. However, the evidence-based practices we’ve explored in this article provide a roadmap which can guide students towards becoming happy and successful writers. By explicitly teaching the writing processes, fostering purposeful and authentic writing projects, teaching writing strategies, and maintaining a balance between composition and transcription, teachers can empower their students to excel. Reading as writers, providing constructive feedback, setting meaningful writing goals for lessons, and embracing the role of being a  writer-teacher can further enhance this journey.

References

• Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(3), 445–476. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.3.445
• Graham, S., Kim, Y.-S., Cao, Y., Lee, W., Tate, T., Collins, P., Cho, M., Moon, Y., Chung, H. Q., & Olson, C. B. (2023). A meta-analysis of writing treatments for students in grades 6–12. Journal of Educational Psychology, 115(7), 1004–1027. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000819
• Hillocks, G. J. (1986). Research on written composition: New directions for teaching. National Council of Teachers of English
• Koster, M., Tribushinina, E., de Jong, P. F., & van den Bergh, H. (2015). Teaching children to write: A meta-analysis of writing intervention research. Journal of Writing Research, 7(2), 249–274. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2015.07.02.2