Teaching approaches

Here are 10 tasks which can help you to improve pupils' writing. For each task there are suggested strategies, ideas and focus areas to help you complete it. You can use them to fine-tune your existing strategies to improve boys’ writing in the classroom.

1. Help pupils understand what kind of writing is required and celebrate their achievements

• Teach to clear objectives that pupils can understand and ask pupils to contribute ideas to help overcome issues themselves, then evaluate the impact and see how involvement motivates them. Ask questions such as, ‘How do you suggest we solve this problem of having to create an effective report for…?’
• Ask pupils to write for a specific audience, and ask that audience to review pupils’ writing and give a response to it. To develop this approach, link to functional skills modules and contexts.
• Respond to the strengths of the writing and offer positive feedback.
• Show pupils respect and always offer constructive criticism.
• Celebrate work by talking about it in class and creating visual displays.
• As a school, give value to the creative and aesthetic aspects of learning.
• Place value on all forms of writing, including notes, diagrams and plans. Some pupils – especially boys – may feel more comfortable expressing ideas using these formats initially.

2. Help pupils understand how to approach writing

• Be clear when you explain how pupils can approach the work. Let them know what support they can expect from you and at which points.
• Tell pupils what resources are on offer to support them, for example dictionaries, thesauruses, ICT tools or the internet, and make these available for independent access.
• Encourage pupils to give each other mutual support and work together to achieve targets through peer coaching; a class is likely to have pupils with a range of strengths and weaknesses, so it can be useful to set up experts in particular parts of the writing process.

3. Consider the recommended sequence for teaching writing

• Once you have made the objectives and nature of the writing task clear, adapt these suggestions as part of your teaching sequence:
  • identify key features of the text through shared reading and text annotation
  • model, constructing part of the text
  • share the writing of a section with the class
  • scaffold (show examples of) the pupils’ first attempts through a guided session
  • introduce independent work straight afterwards
  • intervene at the point of writing, grouping pupils if needed.
• Use alternative texts that play with conventions to help pupils develop their inventive writing, for example use sports magazine articles, which often use a lot of irony, metaphor, highly descriptive imagery or quirky cross-references. These texts may be as appropriate as a conventional work of prose fiction.

4. Break the writing task into manageable chunks

• Plan from the outcome backwards and then share this with the pupils. If pupils are aware of the milestones along the way, they can be well prepared to stick to them, for example you could identify the learning objectives, then look at the assessment criteria and then identify appropriate texts.
• When planning, begin with an overview of the whole text and how it will end, and then focus on how it can be broken down into manageable chunks.
• Decide how much of the text pupils will be producing. Consider working on an introduction, a conclusion or a discursive paragraph rather than on a whole text.

5. Intervene appropriately at the point of writing

• Organise guided groups to help pupils who struggle with specific areas of the writing process, for example focus on planning, sentence work or extending vocabulary.  
  • Set up focused response partners, allowing more able pupils to help the less able. Pair them according to the level of challenge and support they need during the writing process.
• Carry out a check on boys’ handwriting as early as possible in Year 7 and intervene if their handwriting is not appropriately formed, rapid or cursive script. This is essential and will help pupils achieve a comfortable, sustainable handwriting style.
• Practise the act of writing (motor skills) to reinforce accurate spelling.

6. Make good use of guided writing groups to offer focused support

• Guided groups are flexible and group pupils according to their needs, based on teacher evidence – Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP). Include all achievement levels in the group, even the most able of pupils.
• Pair pupils together to support each other as appropriate.
• In guided groups, pupils can:
  • take more responsibility for improving their writing and gain instant feedback on strengths and weaknesses
  • explain the choices they are making as writers, which promotes more thoughtful reflective writing.

7. Help pupils rehearse and clarify ideas and feed back

• To help pupils get an overview of the text they are planning to write, encourage oral rehearsal of whole-text construction and sentences.
• When pupils are working in groups, they can use role play and freeze framing (where pupils are asked to represent characters at a significant moment, which can be used to illustrate a specific incident or event) to establish action, reaction and response in a narrative.
• Use debate and simulation tasks to help pupils develop and organise thoughts for writing persuasive, discursive or argumentative texts.
• Talk partners can be an effective way to help pupils rehearse, clarify ideas and discuss structures. Pupils can use prompt sheets to raise appropriate questions.
• Introduce games and use ICT tools that encourage boys to add words or ideas and manipulate sentence structure.

8. Expect pupils to work independently

• Establish the ethos that pupils will work independently, and insist on it.
• Ensure pupils take responsibility for their independent work. Evaluate what they have done in plenary sessions or ask them to prepare for a guided session in the next lesson.
• Independent work at home will be more successful when pupils are confident about what they are writing and how to go about it.
• Limit the length of independent tasks, for example ask pupils to write three paragraphs and make three points in each paragraph.

9. Help pupils understand how their work will be assessed

• Clearly indicate how pupils’ writing will be critiqued before they start; will it be marked only, or marked and assessed?
• If it is to be assessed, you can explain the criteria based on the objective(s).
• When assessing work, be prepared to accept a range of responses. Give value to succinctness and humour if these are appropriate.
• Place appropriate emphasis on presentation and accuracy.
• When feeding back to pupils, focus on the writing, not the writer. Boys may prefer private feedback.

10. Help pupils be clear about the next steps: Set short-term, SMART targets

• To guide pupils towards the next steps of improvement, you can be clear about individual and group, short-term, SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-related)  targets (use the Writing progression map). Make sure content and style are covered, along with accuracy.
• Set a whole-class, short-term target that will contribute to the curricular target for the year.
• Move pupils on once a target has been achieved. Boys, in particular, need to be clear about their progress.