Talk For Writing In The Early Years: How To Teach Story And Rhyme, Involving Families 2-5 Years

Pie Corbett’s ground-breaking Talk for Writing approach has been successfully used by thousands of schools to teach writing creatively in an engaging way that motivates children.

Now Pie and Julia take this multi-sensory approach to Early Years settings introducing a simple way to inspire young children’s language development through storytelling.

Children learn language through memorable, meaningful repetition. The Talk for Writing approach enables children to internalise the language of story so that they can imitate it, innovate on it and create their own effective stories independently. Talk for Writing in the Early Years will show you how to put rhyme and story at the heart of your work with children and parents so that young learners language development and creativity flourishes.

This multimedia resource shows you how to:

• Select a story or rhyme the children will enjoy and tell it engagingly, encouraging the children to join in
• Use a story map so they can picture what happens
• Use actions to reinforce meaning and emphasise key language patterns
• Help children build a bank of tales, developing their linguistic repertoire

The Online Learning Centre for this resource contains:

• Footage of Pie Corbett conferences with EY teachers showing Talk for Writing in action
• Clips of nursery children engaged in the Talk for Writing approach
• Advice on how to use the videos and handouts to train all staff in the approach
• Interviews with parents and nursery school teachers on the impact of Talk for Writing
• 21 stories with story maps

Table of Contents

Part 1: Developing the Talk-for-Writing approach

The centrality of story and the origins of Talk for Writing

1. The centrality of language development
2. Why narrative and story reading is so important
3. Why enriching young children’s language matters

Aladdin’s Cave: The ‘Talk for Writing and Learning’ classroom

4. Creating a learning ethos

Telling your first story

5. Learning the model text orally – The Little Red Hen

Imitation: Creating the bank of story ideas

6. What do babies and young children learn from being read to?
7. Baseline questions
8. Assessing progress using the baseline as a yardstick
9. Phrases that connect

Imitation: Helping the children become storytellers

10. Getting to know the story really well
11. Captain Kim
12. Shan Holland with her nursery class at Whitley Park Primary, Reading
13. The importance of storytelling – Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle
14. Children in Neath, Port Talbot, presenting stories
15. Internalising the text
16. How to help children retell, read and understand a story
17. Using a roll of wallpaper as a text map
18. A reception teacher explaining the impact of the approach on children learning English as an additional language

Innovation

19. The innovation stage
20. Using post-it notes to innovate before shared writing
21. Moving from imitation to innovation
22. Charlie innovating on a story orally
23. Reading and early writing in nursery
24. Lisa Powell doing simple shared writing with nursery children at St George’s, Battersea
25. Nursery teacher Lisa Powell explains her approach to encouraging the children to start writing
26. Nursery teacher Julia Whitehorn helping children enjoy phonics for spelling and early writing at Warren Farm School, Birmingham
27. Nursery children playing at writing at Yew Tree Farm Primary School, Birmingham
28. The importance of teaching basic writing skills systematically - Matt Custance, St George's, Battersea

Invention: Moving from imitation to independent invention

29. Moving from innovation to invention
30. Independent invention of a story: Advanced invention on a story: a girl from St Thomas of Canterbury, Salford

Invention: Ideas for inventions and the movement from telling to writing

Part 2: Involving families

Why involving parents matters

The storytelling process as the key to family involvement

31. The storytelling process as the key to family involvement
32. Parents and children innovating on The Little Red Hen at Low Edges School, Sheffield
33. Parents from Lowedges explain how and why the approach has helped them and their children

Appendix 1 Sentence, spelling and story games

Appendix 2 The early years story bank

Appendix 3 A dozen picture books ideal for retelling