The Write Stuff at ETPS

The Write Stuff is in full swing at East Tilbury now! The Write Stuff is a new scheme of writing within our school which involves a lot of sentence stacking (creating their own sentences based on different parts of a story), chotting (chatting and jotting) and drama-orientated tasks. All the units then lead to a pupil-led, independent write and I must say, the work seen by teachers has been very impressive! 
 
In reception: 
We have been reading Funnybones by Janet and Allen Ahlberg using our Fantastics to describe and narrate the story. Grandma Fantastic has been bringing us a range of interesting vocabulary to improve our writing. We have been creating our own meaningful moments by engaging our senses and using drama to support our writing.   
 
Year One: 
We have been looking at the story of Pinocchio. We have been writing sentences to describe characters and settings. We have become far more confident with our language ideas over the last few weeks.  
 
Year Two: 
We have started at new unit about Big Cats. We are learning to write non-chronological reports and have identifies the features. We have learned lots of interesting facts about cheetahs. We will then apply our knowledge to write a report about another big cat.   
 
Year Four: 
We have started to look at the story ‘Farther’ by Grahame Baker-Smith, pupils are looking at key plot points within the narrative and looking at key sentences within the text. Children have also explored the front cover and attempted to use their detective skills to work out what they think might happen. We are working our way up to writing our own journey story. 
 
Year Three: 
We have been looking at narrative during English lesson. We looked at the story ‘Stone Age Boy’ with a focus on the grammatical features used in the book. We have now started to plan and write our own narratives based on the story.  
 
Year Five: 
We have been creating narratives based on ‘One Small Step’, an animated video based around themes of loss, hope and growing up with dreams. We then created our own narratives based on Luna, the main character, and her son, who had similar problems when growing up 
 
Year Six: 
We have been using ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan, a beautifully detailed picture book about a father having to leave his wife and daughter to travel to another country to find work. Our writing has focussed on the emotions of the characters in the story, using precise verbs and adjectives and figurative language to express these emotions.   ​