Our aim is that all children:

• are excited and motivated to read, write and express themselves;
• are provided with a rich, experimental and imaginative curriculum;
• are exposed to a wide variety of high-quality literature;
• build and internalise a bank of stories that support them in developing their imagination, vocabulary, writing techniques and confidence;
• are taught phonics, spelling and grammar through a creative approach that is contextualised within the art of writing;
• are exposed to high-quality shared and guided reading and writing, modelling the skills and techniques of being a confident reader and writer;
• receive informative and motivational feedback in order to move them on developmentally, as well as motivationally as readers and writers.

At Warren Road, our aim is that all children love English and are excited to read, write and express themselves. In order to achieve this, we follow Talk for Writing (TFW) as a whole school, a cumulative and systematic process for the teaching of English. Since implementing TFW in 2015, children have made faster progress, gaining confidence as well as pleasure in becoming readers and writers.  The success we have seen through this approach has led to us becoming an accredited Talk for Writing training centre, showcasing some of the best teaching of English across the country.

Talk for Writing fundamentally teaches children how to be writers – not just how to write. It supports children to be able to generate ideas, draw upon their reading and write confidently for a variety of audiences and purposes.  The methodology follows a three-tier pattern: Imitation, Innovation and Independent Application.  During the imitation stage, children get to know a text really well by orally learning it, exploring it through drama and then reading it for vocabulary, comprehension and writer tools.  The Innovation stage is grounded in the processes of shared writing, with a strong and systematic focus on securing the basics of handwriting, phonics/spelling and grammar in relation to what is needed for the text type being taught. The final stage, Independent Application, promotes children to draft, edit and publish their own independent versions.

At the heart of Talk for Writing is the principle that schools should increase the amount children read and are read to.  Warren Road has adopted Talk for Reading as a whole-school approach, establishing a very strong ‘literature spine’ which identifies key stories, picture books, poems and non-fiction which will be read and drawn upon and referred to when teaching writing.

Through their time at Warren Road, children gradually build their bank of well-known texts, supplemented by picture books, novels, poems and non-fiction books. Gradually, this living library of language begins to equip the children with the words they need to express themselves.