Stepping out Writing

Our Tumu team are each taking a new writing focus in order to improve our overall writing within our hub. Stepping out writing is new to me and is going to be a focus area of my term 2 writing with students across the hub. Story telling is based on the Talk for Writing Programme by Pie Corbett. Dr Chris Smith also worked with Pie Corbett and then has gone out on his own. Christchurch East School is quite immersed in the programme and hosted Dr Smith last year, so it may be worth my while to talk to someone there.

This link is an example of the Little Red Hen.

With Stepping out writing students typically learn to tell a story. This is then linked to the teaching of writing and to that of topic content.

The basic process of Stepping out writing is:

Tell- Deepen- shared write-Independent write. Reading can be linked in at any stage:

1. Children learn to tell a story
2. Students map story, step it and speak it.
3. Deepening- students re-explore the story using drama , art music, dance and research so the story develops linguistically and imaginatively in the minds of children.
4. Teachers may teach the story using shared writing or the teacher may innovate and take the original story as a springboard and innovate, i.e giant turnip becomes giant carrot. Little red riding hood becomes little red astronaut going through space. Students can add their own ideas, which adds interest. Children also can invent a new story of their own if they are feeling confident or if they have other/ better ideas. A plot matrix can be used to teach story conventions. When a child has used this matrix we can see how good they are at making up their own stories and feeding what they have learned into their own stories. Reading can be linked in many ways.

As an overall focus we need to care about the purpose: telling great stories that the child is proud of.

This technique can be used to teach non- fiction. In non- fiction it’s about learning the structure. The story is a springboard for connecting with a subject. This is engaging, easy to use and has be proven to lift the standards of writing.

Stepping out is just one part of the process. There is a Pie Corbett text available for purchase which may be useful, however I have managed to locate a few clips on Youtube which have aided me so far. This one is an example.

I look forward to Term Two's writing Inquiry and working as part of a team to improve writing standards in our Tumu hub!