Woodlea is a one form entry school in the North East of England. During the phases of lockdown - our small school network merged into a single entity - which stumbled across the Literacy Tree whilst looking for a new approach to English teaching. As a whole our staff were feeling rather uninspired by the scheme we were using and the children were the same!
In February 2021, I trialled a unit with our Year 6 class, who were keen to help me see what Literacy Tree was like. I chose ‘The Last Wild’ as its theme was so relevant to Covid-19! The engagement and enthusiasm from our Year 6 was instantaneous! Little did we know just how it has transformed their writing! By the end of the 4 week unit, the amount of writing we had completed was more than our previous scheme covered in an entire term!
The children were completely amazed at what they were able to achieve. They were inspired by the modelled writes and determined to include the features in their work. Their stamina for writing grew immensely.
We made the decision that this was the approach for us. I delivered whole staff training and we made the commitment to go whole school in September 2021 with all staff attending Writing Root training from Literacy Tree also.
It has been a complete success, with children desperate to share their favourite books from the curriculum and how much they have enjoyed writing linked to each Root.
Literacy Tree has given our English lessons the book approach we’ve always wanted with planning to support our staff and a clear progression - giving the ‘snowball effect’ that means children constantly revisit skills and build on them.
To sum up - we love Writing Roots and in September we will be rolling out Literary Leaves across Key Stage 2 and we can’t wait to share even more quality texts with our children.
Adele Key
Deputy Head
