At Crestwood Park, we use Talk for Writing to teach writing in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One.
Talk for Writing has been developed by Pie Corbett and follows a three step approach:
1. Imitation
2. Innovation
3. Independent application
Children begin by learning a model text, which could be a story or a non-fiction text. Children rehearse this text until they know it really well. Then they begin to modify the text, changing things like characters or settings. After that, they use this story structure to write their own story. We hope that by the time our children enter Key Stage 2, they have a bank of stories and story structures to draw upon.
To teach Talk for Writing, we use story maps. Story maps are simple pictorial representations to support a child to tell a story. Below is an example story map for Jack and the Beanstalk.
We also use actions for different elements of the story, including key conjunctions. These help the children to remember and retell the story. Below is a video of Crestwood Park's Talk for Writing actions, which are used across all classes.
Here is an overview of the stories that our children will learn in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One.
