Closing the Writing Gap

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This book explains seven critical steps to improve children's writing. Though seemingly 'natural', writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success. Teaching sentence variation. This resource concisely summarises the four key types of sentence level moves that pupils can practise to develop their writing style. The ear of the writer is her most precious attribute. When well developed, this ear brings analytic precision, compositional fluency, and technical skills that are necessary to create and craft writing.” - Dominic Wyse, How Literacy Works I was delighted and relieved then to receive really positive commendations from a brilliant array or teachers, leaders, and research experts. You can read their quotes below: Furthermore, as this article encourages, a child with a specific difficulty such as dyslexia may have literacy as a barrier, but it does not mean they are low ability. Be vigilant and find strategies to enable them. Discrete phonic lessons are needed but not at the expense of a broad and balanced curriculum, and challenge at the same level as their peers. As Mary Myatt writes, set high challenge but with low threat. Catch children succeeding by removing barriers rather than creating a system that sets them up to fail. In the current climate, I know that can be difficult, but with strategies like those suggested above, these children can show what they are truly capable of achieving.

Closing the Writing Gap | Free Chapter - Routledge

Modelling writing approaches. This resource summarises different approaches to modelling writing, including potential benefits and limitations. Geoff Barton, General Secretary, Association of School & College Leaders, and former English Teacher So, what is the reading gap? It is a teacher knowledge gap, but more importantly, it is the gap that exists between reading access, reading practice and reading ability for the pupils in our schools. It marks out the ‘reading rich’ and the ‘reading poor’ populate all of our schools. Less is more. This stands to reason - if you can’t make more time, then ask the child to do less. Perhaps they can continue with a task when others have moved on (if it doesn’t mean they’ll miss curriculum content) or use bullet points to structure but with one or two well written pieces to show depth. Quality not quantity. If you find you need to give individual students guidance to help them catch up in maths, this free guide will help you plan, manage, and teach one to one (and small group) maths interventions in Key Stage 2

The game of writing is infinitely, and brilliantly, complex. And so, the shrinking down of that complexity to crafting sentences shouldn't work...but it does. Our pupils can be overloaded when writing paragraphs and full texts, so honing in on playing with sentence variations can help develop the style and substance of their writing in a more manageable way. Take 'sentence expanding'. This singular strategy to add words, phrases and clauses to sentences, can make for better writing in history (encouraging pupils to show off more of their knowledge), or in English, by expanding upon stylish details (such as adding in sensual descriptions to narrative writing). Let's then make a start by looking at shrinking, combining, expanding, and signposting great sentences. 6. Prioritise disciplinary writing Top 10 grammar moves. This infographic summarises the key grammar moves that feature in academic writing. It is crucial that busy teachers are supported with timely and accessible resources to support their work. As a result, to go alongside my new book, ‘Closing the Writing Gap’, I have produced a small number of tools that I hope will help translate the insights from the book into action. This book explains seven critical steps to improve children’s writing. Though seemingly ‘natural’, writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success.With the goal of giving every teacher the knowledge and skill to teach writing with confidence, it makes sense of the history and ‘science’ of writing, synthesising the debates and presenting a wealth of usable evidence about how children develop most efficiently as successful writers.It trains teachers to be an expert in how pupils learn to write, from the big picture of planning, editing and revising your writing, to the vital importance of grammar and spelling with accuracy. Highly practical strategies and easy-to use classroom activities are included to help teachers seize opportunities across the curriculum every school day to teach the critical writing process. Closing the Writing Gap will guide teachers at every stage of their career and when used with Alex Quigley’s much-loved books on Vocabulary and Reading gives school leaders evidence-based approaches to literacy that can be applied across a school or a group of schools. Closing the Writing Gap by Alex Quigley – eBook Details Closing the Writing Gap does offer a simple conceptual model. But for me, it was not robust enough to fully grasp the full spectrum of the development of writing. Early years, key stage 1 teachers and, equally, those who work with struggling writers at all stages of education, would have been helped by a more comprehensive model. For example, I would have loved to have read Quigley’s take on Joan Sedita’s ‘writing rope’ model, which is far more detailed (and arguably more helpful). Maybe he’ll do that soon.

Closing The Writing Gap | PDF | Teachers | Cognition - Scribd Closing The Writing Gap | PDF | Teachers | Cognition - Scribd

This book provides an easy-to-read and entertaining synthesis of research on writing, beginning with a compelling overview of how writing developed. It has written text at its heart and offers readers a succinct insight into textual research and its practical application to the writing classroom. The book is a rich source of directions for further reading and examples of strategies for teaching writing which will support teachers to reflect on what happens in their writing classrooms and to make enabling changes." With the goal of giving every teacher the knowledge and skill to teach writing with confidence, it makes sense of the history and 'science' of writing, synthesising the debates and presenting a wealth of usable evidence about how children develop most efficiently as successful writers. Yes, we all teach ‘sentences’ in primary education. But as a profession we must think harder about the value of teaching the nature of sentences, how to manipulate them and evaluate them in light of writing purposes and how to choose words confidently. I am utterly convinced of the need for us all to look again at our curriculums to evaluate the progression of this important aspect of writing. We have already begun.This book provides an easy-to-read and entertaining synthesis of research on writing, beginning with a compelling overview of how writing developed. It has written text at its heart and offers readers a succinct insight into textual research and its practical application to the writing class- room. The book is a rich source of directions for further reading and examples of strategies for teaching writing which will support teachers to reflect on what happens in their writing classrooms and to make enabling changes.” Like many teachers my age, I was not taught grammar explicitly at school; or at least, I can’t remember if I was. I learned it on the job, preparing my students for their grammar tests. It was then that I realised the power of sharing with my students what Daisy Christodoulou describes as the ‘meta-language’ of words. With the goal of giving every teacher the knowledge and skill to teach writing with confidence, it makes sense of the history and ‘science’ of writing, synthesising the debates and presenting a wealth of usable evidence about how children develop most efficiently as successful writers. The ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sound structure of words. In writing, this difficulty will show in spelling. But when a child struggles to spell it can impede their writing significantly, affecting fluency, vocabulary and confidence. Some children will only write words they know they can spell and this means much writing will not reflect their verbal ability. With all the effort of trying to spell and write, a child’s working memory may be taken up with concentrating on this rather than the content of their writing. Freeing up the cognitive load could really help with the fluency of their writing, liberating them to be creative and relaxed. For assessment purposes, under this climate, a teacher can really see their potential. So, this is a book that covers an admirable amount of ground, and I would highly recommend it to all teachers. But while the history of writing was a worthwhile discussion, and the practical approaches for grammar and sentence-level teaching invaluable, the chapter on the science of writing left me with more questions than answers.

Closing the gap – 7 of the best KS1/KS2 catchup resources Closing the gap – 7 of the best KS1/KS2 catchup resources

I never expected two years ago that this book would be published during a global crisis that would see pupils impacted by school closures. When you wed closures to limited book access, limited teaching, along with limited support at home, the prospect for the reading gap is massively challenging.

What's Inside A Real Writing Resource?

Novice writers, including those learning in schools, encounter teachers as gatekeepers of topics, forms, means and processes. But those teachers are often constrained by systems, including the accountability that tests and examinations required by governments engender." - Wyse, How Writing Works But what is likely to be even more revolutionary in my classroom is the following chapter on sentence construction. Referencing a swathe of research I am definitely going to go away and study, this short treatise alone makes the book worth the investment. From it, I realised that I have not been explicit enough in my teaching of syntax and how important it is in closing the gap for my weaker writers.