Jumpstart! Grammar by Corbett Pie; Strong Julia;

Author:Corbett, Pie; Strong, Julia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Silly writer

The teacher writes in front of the children but keeps making silly mistakes – these might be spelling errors, missing out words, muddling words up, omitting capital letters or punctuation. The children have to help the poor old teacher!

Billy and Betty

Years ago, I invented two characters called Billy and Betty. The idea was quite simple. On some days Billy or Betty (they were twins) would sneak into our classroom and write the next part of our story on the flip chart. The trouble with Billy and Betty was that they kept making the same sorts of mistakes that the class made so the children had to help Billy and Betty by rereading their writing and editing. One teacher actually overheard two seven-year-olds saying one day, ‘It’s funny, but I think Billy is getting better at writing!’

The writing agony aunt

Older pupils can role-play at being a writing agony aunt. It can help if you cook up a piece of writing yourself that has many of the sorts of weaknesses that are typical in the class’s writing but also include some real strengths. The children have to edit the writing – perhaps using polishing pens (see below) – but also write a message to the writer, advising on how to improve. This might be as a message, letter or a list of ideas. Develop a sense of the children being ‘experts’ so that writing well is not an instinctive activity but often discussed so that children have explicit understanding about how good use of grammar can create an effect on the reader.

Polishing pens

Provide children with polishing pens. These can be fine coloured highlighters. When you ‘mark’ children’s writing use a certain colour to indicate what is effective, eg pink for perfect. Then use a different colour to indicate where the writing needs improving, developing or is inaccurate, eg green for growth. When the writing is returned, the children then use their polishing pens (any fine highlighter pen that they only use to polish their writing) to improve anything marked in green by the teacher. Some schools use various symbols to indicate where a punctuation error has been made (p) or a spelling error (sp) or an improvement or change is required (I). This sort of habit means that children’s errors do not slip by unnoticed. Of course, the polishing pens are popular. If you use a visualiser, project a child’s work and model how to read through a piece of writing, discussing ‘what works’, ‘what does not’ and ‘how to improve’. Children can eventually work as response partners, editing and developing in pairs. It is crucial that they share and discuss the writing rather than just swapping books – it is the discussion about ‘what works’ and ‘why’ that helps the children to learn about what makes effective writing and how to improve their own compositions.

Build a sentence

I have often wondered why it is that so many children can have been in school for seven years and still cannot write sentences.

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