Brigstock Lathams CE Primary School is a single-form school in rural Northamptonshire. As a small village school, we have mixed-age classes and the configuration of these varies from year to year depending on pupil numbers. We have Reception/Y1, Y2, Y3/4, and Y5/6.
When I joined the school as English lead, we were looking for a new approach to the delivery of reading and writing lessons to enthuse both the staff and the children. We wanted a flexible approach to teaching rather than a scheme of work. Literacy Tree fulfilled this criteria along with the added benefit of exposing children to diverse, ambitious texts in their entirety rather than just extracts. We wanted the freedom to select texts which would appeal to our children and also to challenge us as adults to engage with a wider range of current children’s literature. I trialled a Writing Root with my Y3/4 class which produced amazing written outcomes and fantastic pupil voice responses so we rolled the approach out to the whole school in September 2022.
Our children and staff love the range of texts we are now sharing as we are now exploring books that we would not initially have chosen ourselves. There is always an audible groan when we pause at key points as they are desperate to know what is going to happen next. There is a real ‘buzz’ in the classrooms during English lessons as children share the texts, develop their vocabulary and articulate their ideas.
We love the discovery points at the beginning of each Writing Root to generate a sense of awe and mystery about the new text. Children engage in critical thinking as they begin to generalise and make inferences from the initial clues presented to them.
Our longer pieces of written work, at the end of each unit, are seeing more children feeling confident about their writing and viewing themselves as writers. This year, we are embracing opportunities to publish our writing instantly which is enabling us to showcase our work with a wider audience.
Michelle Jackson
English Lead
