Posted on: 03/04/2023
Teaching through a text is an inclusive model of teaching reading and writing, allowing everyone in the class to become immersed in the world of a rich, high-quality text. This shared experience is central to our ethos at Literacy Tree. Last month in our blog, we explored how to adapt teaching to support the needs of everyone in the class, allowing all children to engage with the text and respond appropriately to their needs as learners. Often, this scaffolding and support will be targeted at our lowest 20% of children. This time we’ll be looking at how to offer further challenge and deepen the thinking of those children who are ready for it. The right text offers the opportunity for deep thinking irrespective of attainment level, and to be clear, we are not necessarily talking about GDS here. Instead, we will explore how to further challenge any child through deepening their thinking about, understanding of and responses to a text.
Making links between and across texts is an important tool in deepening thinking, and allows children to draw comparisons between themes, authors, styles and structures. In turn, this supports children to add more to their own literary banks through literary phrasing and techniques, vocabulary choices and patterns of language as well as the conventions of different writing styles. In Key Stage 1, introducing children to the themes explored in a text and supporting them to make links with other texts studied with similar (or indeed different) themes can be a great way to deepen their thinking. As themes can be quite abstract concepts to get their heads around, try to build their understanding of them by making explicit links between the themes and their own experiences e.g. does this remind you of a time when you had to be brave? Rather than expecting children to come up with these themes by themselves, give them a selection of themes to pick from and develop further, supporting them to see similarities between this and other texts. A connections web on your working wall focused on themes can be a really useful tool to support this, so that children start to build a deeper understanding of how the same theme can be present and represented differently in different stories. In Key Stage 2, deepen children’s thinking by considering more complex themes (such as justice, envy and pride) and encourage them to explore the differences as well as the similarities between texts. Are there any conflicting themes present? This is a great foundation for the critical analysis required in Key Stage 3.
It is important not to be drawn into the idea that we must only teach objectives from the year group we are teaching. Instead, look at the key skills required by Appendix 2 for your year group and track that specific skill up (and down!) to see how it develops and consider what these skills look like on a deeper, more advanced level. The focus can, for example, remain on the development of noun phrases, but for some children who require greater challenge this could focus in more specifically on ‘noun of noun’ phrases with a focus on combining concrete and abstract nouns (e.g. a doorway of opportunity, a soul of solitude, a journey of terror) or developing these further with the use of prepositional phrases.
One of the key skills present in skilled writers, which is sometimes described as flair, is the use and application of literary language. It can be a bit of misconception that flair cannot be taught and that some children ‘just have it’. In reality, the reason those children have that skill in writing is often down to the quality of the reading diet they have. This is why text choice is so important in developing skilled writers and why in-depth exploration of these texts is central to our pedagogy. However, this alone is not enough, and it is important not to give in to the temptation to just ‘leave them to it’ because you know they have the level of skill to write independently. Sentence experimentation and manipulation through the use of sentence strips and word banks, and vocabulary development through zones of relevance, shades of meaning and ordering tasks can be easily adapted to challenge children to think more deeply and should not be seen as just scaffolds for children who struggle with writing. Develop their literary bank further by giving them opportunities to practise and apply examples of high-quality literary phrasing and figurative language in different contexts and spend time unpicking this language with them. Focusing on phrasing rather than just individual word choice is essential. Draw their attention to different conventions authors have within their writing, noticing similarities in styles and giving them the chance to mirror these. By practising writing in the style of different authors, it allows them the space to develop their own particular style and writerly craft. When it comes to individual word choices, work on precision and the idea that less can sometimes be more.
Audience and purpose are the drivers behind every authentic writing opportunity we embed in our Writing Roots. Knowing who you are writing for and the reason for writing is key to both engagement and success. In terms of providing greater challenge, a shift in perspective is sometimes all that is needed to encourage children to think more deeply. When writing from an alternative character’s perspective, children apply deeper inference skills in order to place themselves in the shoes of that character and make comparisons. A shift in audience can also be a great way to deepen thinking. How would the language need to change if this persuasive formal letter to the prison officers about their maltreatment of Suffragettes were instead to be a letter to a suffragette themself in the prison? This could take the form of formality shifts, but also a greater focus on emotive language. It could be a shift in time frame – imagining this were to happen in today’s society. How would the language choices be affected?
Higher attaining writers can sometimes be those who are the most reluctant editors. The skill of editing is a difficult one to master and without the careful and precise teaching of editing, these sessions can easily become wasted. Giving a precise focus for editing, and adapting this focus according to the needs of individual pupils is a good way to deepen the thinking of those pupils who need further challenge. Rather than focusing on editing for accuracy, spend more time editing for clarity and cohesion. In Key Stage 1, rather than punctuation, focus on vocabulary choices and experimenting with literary phrases borrowed from authors. In Key Stage 2, you could focus on the precision of word choices, selection of pronouns or range of adverbials throughout the entire piece of writing. As well as this, reminding children that editing for clarity sometimes requires the removal or words as well as the addition of them and that sometimes less is more. At times the very end of a piece of extended writing can be rushed. By focussing editing on the final paragraph (in either key stage), it allows more time for careful reflection on how the ending ties up the overall message or theme of the piece and how to round it off effectively. In KS2, explore how shifts in tense can add to this and make links to earlier aspects of the writing or perhaps the future.
A well-chosen text allows you to involve and immerse the whole class in its world. While it is easy for our focus to be drawn to those children who require additional support to access their learning, simple adaptations allow children who need further challenge to deepen their thinking. We hope these suggestions support you in personalising planning for those children in your class, allowing them to further develop their writerly craft whilst navigating through a rich, high-quality text.
Posted in: Curriculum
