Talk for Writing - National Showcase School

Talk for Writing (TfW) Showcase Schools offer open mornings where teachers and leaders from other schools can see TfW in action in the classroom. During the open mornings, visitors are able to see teaching and learning in the classroom using TfW and look at books and outcomes. Visitors are also provided with the opportunity to speak with leadership about the implementation of TfW and learn from the school's improvement journey. 

Britannia is one of seven TfW Showcase Schools nationally and the only showcase school in East Anglia. 

If you would like to book onto one of our opening mornings, please complete the form below. We look forward to hearing from you!

How do we teach writing at Britannia?

We adopted the Talk for Writing (TfW) approach in 2018 after realising that our school needed a more consistent approach in writing lessons in order to enhance the children’s speaking capabilities. After improving their spoken language, the children’s confidence in writing heightened and our writing results soared.

TfW has totally transformed our teaching of writing. It has ensured that the children can clearly see their progress and are incredibly proud of their writing. As TfW has a key focus on talk, vocabulary, and speaking in full and varied sentences, it has had a positive impact across the curriculum. Our whole curriculum is centred around the importance of oracy, which in turn, transfers to high quality writing. 

Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. Each unit of English follows the TfW approach where the children study a model text and:

Imitaion Phase:

• Imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally.
• Read and analyse the model text.
• Write shorts bursts of writing linked our model text.
• Learn about which tools to use for particuar audiences and purposes and what effect they have on the reader.

Innovation Phase:

Write an innovated version of the model text. We innovate in different ways e.g. substitution, flashbacks, sequels etc. 

Independent Phase:

Finally, write Hot tasks where they have a new stimulus to write independently.