What is Talk for Writing?

"Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version."

Through carefully planned units the children develop their vocabulary and their confidence in their ability to use both oral and written language.
Talk for Writing encourages the children to talk about their ideas and then understand and use the key features of different genres.

The children learn texts using visual text maps as a prompt and then practice the texts by incorporating drama and games. They then create story maps or ‘box up’ the text which acts as a plan for later independent writing. In this plan they are able to ‘magpie’ ideas from the original text that they would like to include in their own writing later in the week. Following this, the children are then encouraged to change aspects of the original text to produce a new piece of writing.

In the final phase, it is hoped that the children will have a secure knowledge of the genre and be able to produce a piece of work entirely independently.