As we launch our brand-new Whole School Writing Root into the world, we’re excited at the prospect of children and teachers experiencing the joy of Poonam Mistry’s stunning book, The Midnight Panther. Dedicated to ‘anyone who has ever felt different’, we explore the world of Panther who is bullied, sneered at and excluded. This big cat has a plan though: surely if he tries to be just like the others, he’ll be accepted, won’t he? With wise counsel, he comes into his true self in this moving, modern fable.

The illustrations are intricate without detracting from the narrative and, in the way we’ve seen in Mistry’s previous release (How the Stars came to be, Tate Publishing, 2021) inspired by her Indian heritage.  So why do we believe that this will work well as a whole school text? And what are the benefits of using a whole school text for the teaching of Literacy? Here are our top five compelling reasons for doing so. A well-chosen whole-school text:

With the right text, the opportunity for awe and wonder is too great a gift to miss. When everyone in a school engages in that text, then there’s the opportunity for children of all ages to drive the excitement for each other. With our popular The Fox and the Star (Coralie Bickford Smith) whole school resource, one school managed to find a local person to crochet foxes for each class to ‘discover’; in another school, children entered a wooded area in the school grounds to find several foxes amongst glittering, hanging stars and were invited to find the perfect fox for their classes. That other children - of all ages - were working in the same way added to the joy felt by all: nobody was missing out and everyone had the same chance to explore the magic of a text of unarguable literary merit. With The Midnight Panther, children arrive to a series of paw prints (big cat prints) that have appeared around the school building / playground. There might also be leaves and trees to be found – the kind that might be found in a rainforest – and even clumps of ‘fur’ and hints of stripy tails!

Our Whole School Roots - just like all of our other resources - have been designed with flexibility in mind. But how does this look in terms of ensuring the children are exposed to what they need? Well, we don’t like to place limits upon learning so within a whole school resource such as this, there’s scope for scooping back for children needing support to fill any gaps. There’s also the possibility of extending learning so that more experienced children have the chance to develop their knowledge and skills too. Really, a whole school resource is a bigger, more comprehensive version of our Mixed Age Planning Suggestions. For example, in session 2 of the Writing Root for The Midnight Panther, all children create descriptive poems with the crucial difference being that the types of noun phrase the children use develops for each age/stage:

 

Is supportive of teachers...

Many of our schools choose to use a whole school text at the start of an academic year; the end of the calendar year and/or at the end of the school year. These timings all work well but how can working in this way help colleagues? Working on a shared endeavour means that everyone is not just part of the same conversation around pedagogy (as schools who use our Teach Through a Text approach are) but also around the text’s themes and writing opportunities. This means that less experienced or less confident teachers have inbuilt support from their colleagues therefore making this a shared endeavour for not only pupil - pupil or teacher -pupil but also teacher - teacher. This can be especially useful at the start of an academic year where you may have Early Career Teachers or teachers new to school and therefore our Teach Through a Text approach.

From the perspective of an English Subject Leader and/or Senior Leader, who may/may not be class-based, the use of a Whole School Root provides the ideal framework from which to gauge success of outcomes and moderate across phases and the whole school. In the Writing Root for The Midnight Panther , one opportunity that the children can engage in explores the issuing of advice to the distressed cat. The youngest pupils use commands – either verbally or in writing; children from Years 2 to 4 use some subordination; the Year 5’s use modal verbs and the Year 6’s, the subjunctive mood. The advice is given either verbally (for the very youngest children) or in the form of a letter meaning that whilst the grammar used to achieve the outcome differs depending on age/stage, the audience and purpose remain the same throughout. This creates an authentic bank of evidence to draw upon in order for leaders to evaluate their curriculum offer and assess impact.

The richness of discussion that can be had not just within a class or year group but a phase and the whole school is incredible. In fact, we’d go as far to say that this could be transformative for children. Children will be exposed to views, ideas, stories, themes, experiences and discussion out-with the bubble of their class but still within the bubble of the book! And let’s not forget the opportunities that are presented to us for children to write for, with and/or in response to each other: this solidifies the concept of audience and purpose in a most powerful way. Imagine children being paired up/ sorted into small groups across KS1 and LKS2 and working together to be actors and narrators. The older children will feel a sense of pride in being able to ‘direct’ and give additional ‘lines’ (speaking parts!) to the younger children whilst the younger children will feel inspired by older children who they look up to. Perfect also for our smaller schools who already work with mixed age classes.