The Writing Revolution Mapped
Having gorged on The Writing Revolution and loved every page of it (where has it been all my teaching life?), I was still left wondering how this would fit in with the National Curriculum requirements for writing in primary schools in this country.
A quick note about the excel file. I fine-grained many objectives for my own diagnostic purposes as a class teacher and as someone who has not taught for a few years and therefore wanted to see the progression across KS1 and KS2. This sheet was never designed for assessment of all the objectives or to be used to track pupils (because that would be insane). You would need to translate this back to the original objectives if that is what you are using but this should be easy enough.
Bearing in mind that I haven’t planned and taught with it, simply read the book, here is the current coverage I envisage:
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However, I know that in practice this would need to be revised in terms of whether objectives are covered or even if they are covered if they are met fully by following the programme.
As excited as I am by it, I realise that there are some key points that need to be thought through by teachers and more to the point, SLT, before putting any of it into practice.
1) The Writing Revolution is all about non-fiction, and while I think some adaptation is possible, the objectives of fiction writing will need to be addressed separately. This raises the issue of parallel teaching of fiction and non-fiction writing. It will be imperative to ensure that mixed messages are not being given out to children with regards to the construction of sentences.
2) While they do suggest introducing the activities with generic contexts that are part of the children’s everyday life (such as holidays, school, etc), they expect all further teaching to be in the context of a curriculum activity. The assumption is that the school is teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum that can be drawn on in order to consolidate and apply the writing skills being taught to the children.
However, if like the past teacher me, you have a rough medium-term plan outline of the curriculum and are fleshing these out week to week, then I’m not sure how easy it would be to make the best use of the Writing Revolution. It is the content of the lesson that should drive the selection of writing activity not the other way around, hence knowing the exact content of each lesson is important.
While it is always necessary to adjust plans and lessons, it needs to be the exception not the rule. Like Expressive Writing there is an order to the programme and a pick and mix approach will not work.
As such it does require medium-term mapping out of the programme in advance alongside the knowledge-rich curriculum. This should make the weekly planning less time consuming as it would be known what is being taught and what writing activity you will be teaching. However, if you are still required to hand in weekly or daily planning that is highly detailed, I envisage this will simply add to this. It is imperative that if SLT want to implement this whole school that they consider the front loaded workload implications as well as what time they will give to teachers to do this, given the other expectations placed on them in terms of planning.
3) The Writing Revolution is a long-term solution, not a short-term fix. You will need to hold your nerve in KS2. The Writing Revolution is ideal for KS1 teachers as, without the SATs, they will be free to focus on sentence construction. However, Years 3 – 5 do have the space to be able to take this on.
While pacing guides are available (that take into account a different starting point other than the child’s first year of schooling) the first half term of teaching is sentence heavy. There is no point in the children producing reams of writing when they are insecure about writing a basic sentence. Unless they are secure, they simply will never have a firm foundation to build on. Even as I write this sentence, I know that I have a basic version of it to fall back on. One that I know will communicate what I want. It is this basic sentence that so many children, especially disadvantaged children, lack and need to practice daily and repeatedly so that it is embedded.
4) The Writing Revolution marries well with my own beliefs about writing, i.e. that it should primarily be about communication, with self-expression as a product of that. This is at odds with all the other writing programmes and schemes of work I have taught from in the past.
It will jar those who want children to be creative writers first and foremost and see the technical aspect as boring and likely to put children off writing. Of course, there is nothing quite like not knowing how to write to put a child off writing.
For every child who is inspired by creative environments to produce the odd piece of amazing writing, there are many more who simply don’t have the knowledge to be able to write well. To keep ignoring this fact and hoping secondary can fix this is to abdicate our responsibility as primary teachers. The inconsistency and insecurity among even among the so-called “high ability” children I have taught is not something that can simply be ignored. There is a reason why they cling to basic sentences when I wanted them to expand and extend them. The amount of modelling, scaffolding and practice needed is far greater than has been taken into account previously. The main barrier to this has been the dizzying number of genres that were taught to children in a haphazard fashion which I have blogged and talked about at ResearchEd.
In the end, whether one chooses to use The Writing Revolution or not, it certainly calls into question the teaching of writing as has been the norm. I have looked at this purely through the eyes of a primary teacher. For secondary school, the implications would be far more wide-reaching, not just in terms of mapping it out against the curriculum but in terms of coordinating efforts within and across departments. Ultimately, this is not a pick of the shelf and implement by yourself solution for teachers. The potential for improving the teaching of writing is matched equally by the challenge of implementing it.
* Please do let me know if you disagree or spot any mistakes I will update these.
April 14, 2018 @ 2:13 pm
Thanks for this very interesting post. I currently work with primary schools as an adviser (and a KS1 and 2 moderator) and while I agree with much of what you say here, I feel that you and The Writing Revolution approach are missing a vital ingredient. Although I haven’t read the book yet (so apologies if this is dealt with in the book), I have watched the videos and read about the Hochman method and I wonder if it pays enough attention to oracy. The videos on the WR website show children co-constructing sentences which seem to be relatively unchallenging in that any of them could have created a similar sentence orally in response to a question (e.g. using ‘so’ or ‘because’). They appear, therefore, to be rehearsing something that, in spoken language, they already know how to do. Where much primary writing teaching falls down, in my opinion, is that teachers don’t spend long enough on ensuring that pupils thoroughly understand the content and are able to talk about it confidently before writing. The desire to ‘cover’ a range of genres is undoubtedly partially to blame but I also feel that many teachers underestimate the role of talk in constructing coherent and sophisticated ideas (and therefore sentences) because they are encouraged by senior management to ‘get something in the books’.
April 14, 2018 @ 5:28 pm
I welcome critique but don’t feel it is valid in this case. This was never an outline of the book or my views on the writing in it’s all it’s facets.
The role of oracy is covered in the book and the importance of orally rehearsing sentences during formation. I think model videos are just that and aren’t intended to show the journey that children have taken. Whether it was challenging enough for those children isn’t something I would want to comment on without knowing the children involved and I don’t think anyone can judge accurately.
The role of oracy is something I would agree with you on however it can not be a replacement for actually writing (which is can be at times in KS1). In addition, I would say oracy itself needs to be modelled for the most disadvantaged children and requires much repetition and practice in order for disadvantaged children to acquire the ability to speak in phrases then sentences and the Hochman method lends itself to that.
I don’t think it is the fault of teachers or their choice in terms of underestimating the importance of oracy, it’s a curriculum issue and fall out from progressive ideas about teaching writing. The notion that children can be enticed into writing drove the notion of them writing in lots of different genres (I cover that in my ResearchED talk) and this is something we as teachers were expected to make work. I am grateful that teachers rather than consultants and so-called experts are able to take the lead a bit more in the current climate thus really addressing the issues that we have faced in teaching over the last 20 (and some would say 50) years of education.
November 21, 2022 @ 9:49 pm
Hi
I am introducing The Writing Revolution into school and I am really interested in your mapping, but unfortunately I cannot download it. Would you be able to email it to me please?
July 8, 2023 @ 4:00 pm
Hi, I am also introducing TWR, and have run into the same download issue. Would you mind sending it to me as well please? Thank-you.
July 9, 2023 @ 12:57 pm
If you follow me on twitter, you can then send me your email address. Alternatively, you can send a reply to this with your email but I won’t approve it to publish.
July 9, 2023 @ 12:58 pm
If you follow me on twitter, you can then send me your email address. Alternatively, you can send a reply to this with your email but I won’t approve it to publish.