Talk for Writing in Secondary Schools: About
'Silent classrooms do not lend themselves to progress, the Foreword to this important new book reminds us. What follows is an exceptionally well-informed and practical guide to how high quality talk can lead to high quality writing. I strongly recommend it for all teachers across all subjects'.
Geoff Barton, Headteacher of King Edward VI School, Suffolk, UK, author and speaker
Building on best practice, this practical guide takes you step by step through how to establish quality written communication across the secondary curriculum. It can be used as a handbook by a literacy coordinator to lead the approach as well as being a source of practical ideas for each subject area. Every teacher can help students internalize the pattern of language of their subject through focused talk activities related to exemplar text. This enables students to independently generate the sentence patterns and structures that are key to effective communication in any subject.
Julia Strong puts the experience of the learner at the centre. By establishing some consistent approaches across the curriculum, the learner can see how what they learn in one area can be transferred to support learning in another. The approach progressively builds up students' linguistic competence involving them in co-constructing the next steps they need to take to make progress.
This practical resource offers:
• Wide range of examples from all subject areas with a particular focus on science
• Video of a training session with teachers showing Talk for Writing in action suitable to use on training days to help introduce and embed the approach
• Over 80 customisable handouts downloadable online
• Customisable PowerPoint slides to train all staff in the approach
Thoroughly grounded in the principles of formative assessment, Talk for Writing if systematically applied across the curriculum really can turn secondary students into powerful communicators. Try it, it works!
Table of Contents
Part One: Introduction
Introducing the Talk-for-Writing approach
Laying the foundations
Part Two: The 5 steps to adapting units of work to the Talk-for-Writing approach
Step A: Creating exemplar text that builds in progression
Step B: Warming up the words of the unit
Step C: Warming up the phrases of the unit
Step D: Internalising the tune of exemplar text — the basic approach
Step D continued: More sophisticated approaches to internalising the tune of exemplar text
Step E: Consolidating learning to build in progress
Part Three: Achieving an effective whole-school approach
The first steps to establishing a whole-school approach
Embedding the approach through co-constructing your policy
Appendix: A case study of how the Talk-for-Writing approach relates to maths
