At Chilvers Coton school, our intent is for our children to develop a love for reading and writing and to fully engage with the English language. We aim to develop confident speakers who have a well-developed vocabulary and know their voice matters. 

We will provide our children with engaging activities and experiences to immerse them in subject matter and to enable them to use real life contexts to speak, listen, read and write. Our well-planned reading curriculum enables children to read and revisit high quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry to develop a joy in reading. 

We want all of our children to be capable, confident speakers, readers and writers by the time they leave our school who can transfer their skills across the curriculum and apply them in real life. 

Talk for Writing

At Chilvers Coton we use Talk for Writing to improve writing across the school. Talk for Writing was developed by the author Pie Corbett. It is a fun, creative yet also rigorous approach to develop writers.

Talk for Writing starts with enjoying and sharing stories. Throughout the school, we place a strong emphasis on children reading stories and enjoying a range of literature. Through regular reading, we want children to build up an extensive and rich vocabulary for use in their own writing.

During the initial 'imitation' stage of Talk for Writing, children learn to tell a story off by heart. They retell a text with expression and actions and make use of a story map to support their retelling. Once the story is learnt, children are encouraged to adapt it. At the 'innovation' stage, children make the story their own, for example, by changing the character or setting. Finally, at the 'invention' stage, children write their own text independently.