Talk for Learning

In SCE schools, we are exploring ways to stop classroom work becoming ritualised. Rather than always starting with the text, we are trying instead to:

• use pictures as a stimulus to precede reading and writing,
• use 'talk for writing',
• introduce variation into the teaching of the Literacy lesson.

Teachers encourage talk to explore the story, to ask questions about what is happening and why. Stories are generated orally using pictures before the text is introduced.

A teaching sequence may include the following elements:

• Silent thinking
• paired talk
• whole class sharing of story
• paired storytelling introduction to text (kinaesthetic sorting)
• shared reading & drama (group and paired hot seating)
• shared writing (consider a variety of genres)

Thus offering children lots of different opportunities to access the material.

Select the images below to view examples of planning in different genres of writing which follow the talk for writing method, including teaching sequences, resources and children's work.

Bullying	Father's attic	Florence Nightingale
Fox hunting	Multimodal texts	Oscar and Hoo
Percy	Script writing	Snow lambs
The Blacksmith	The Boat	Victorians