Talk for Writing - Improving Writing

Book talk - this is about eliciting a response to the text used and consists of the following three stages:

eliciting a response
extending the response
critiquing the response

'Reading is the creative center of a writer.' On Writing. A memoir of the craft by Stephen King.

Read about talk for writing and watch a short video explaining what book talk is.

Writer talk - this is about:

reading as a writer
writing with a reader in mind

Read about writer talk and watch a short video explaining what it is. For an idea about a writer talk activity see here.

Learning and remembering texts - this follows the steps of:

hear it
map it
step it
say it

and works over the stages of

imitate
innovate
invent and inventing part 2. For an example of a non-fiction inventing session see here. We use mindmaps in fiction almost as a pick 'n' mix activity to invent stories. See our examples for fairy tales, myths and adventure stories. The idea however is that you devise these with your class because the point of inventing is that the children draw upon what they know. These are all in Smart Notebook form.

This is a way of learning that uses visual, auditory and kinesthetic cues as support for the retelling. Look here for a suggestion of actions that could be used. See a range of story maps here.

Read about learning and remembering texts, watch a short video about it and see how it is done.

To see a list of stories that would be appropriate for storytelling have a look at the suggestions from Chris Smith. Interested in working with a storyteller? Have a look at this.

Purposeful sentence level work - on the training we look at various aspects of sentence level work but have linked here to some of the handouts that we use.

Connecting adverbs and adverbial phrases - categorised by text type

Warming up the word- this consists of four main areas

generating vocabulary - activating dormant vocabulary. Watch a short video about one activity and then how the words generated can be sorted according to audience and purpose
usual words in unusual combinations - this is about putting words together to create something new. Watch this video for one suggestion of how to do this.
expanding ideas
developing the imagination and imaging - being able to 'see' and image in your head and 'look' at it really carefully to explore it and find words to describe it.

Watch a short video that explains what warming up the word is and why it is important.

Texts that we have used on talk for writing training.

For our first talk for writing project we used Beauty and the Beast by Geraldine McCaughrean. This is a beautiful retelling with dream-like illustrations. The language is incredibly rich with poetic word order, e.g. 'Into a forest of fifty thousand trees rode a lone traveller.' The sentences are replete with detail and offer great variation in openings.
Whe working with Heads and Literacy subject leaders we used Blue John which is unfortunately now out of print. For our latest project we are using Think of an Eel an amazing non-ficiton book about eels told through two voices. Voice one is that of literary non-fiction being very poetic and the second voice that of a more formal report. The difference between the two is well worth exploring with children and looking at how they can imitate and innovate upon the voices.