Writing

Staff appreciate how complex writing can be so are trained to use sentence starters, key word banks and other supportive measures to break down complex writing activities and reduce the load on the student’s working memory. Each subject has developed their own techniques to enable students to be successful in writing. For example, an English lesson may focus upon the skills needed to write a lengthy, imaginary fiction text whilst in a maths lesson students would be focusing on the importance being able explain the reasoning behind the answer to a calculation.

Teachers commonly model what excellent writing should look like using their visualisers. They do this themselves by writing exemplar pieces of work, in real time, that showcase the skills required to enable students to develop their own pieces. Teachers also use ‘Show call’, a technique where examples of the best student writing are shown under the visualiser and celebrated as such.

Where the teacher identifies that it is required, students are encouraged to review and redraft work.