What is iWrite?
This year as part of our writing programme, Motuihe are using ideas from the Big Writing programme (UK) to help enhance your child’s own writing.
We will focus on four key aspects of quality writing:
Vocabulary—every child is encouraged to widen their use of language, in order to make their writing richer, e.g. ‘The sirens filled the sky.’ - not that interesting! However, by developing vocabulary: ‘The screaming sirens were suffocating the quiet night.’ is a far more interesting sentence to read!
Connectives—or joining words, are really important for ensuring writing is cohesive and interesting. Good examples are: although, however, besides, even though, nevertheless, in addition to, contrary to, despite.
Openers—by varying the way you open sentences, writing becomes more engaging to read. Many Connectives also make good openers, other good examples are: Before very long, An important thing, Having decided to, Meanwhile. Using adjectives at the start of sentences is also powerful e.g., ’The golden sun’ or ’The grumpy old man’. Varying the sentence length and word order can also help, as well as using complex sentences structures.
Punctuation—the ‘icing on the cake’, so to speak! Children are encouraged to use appropriate punctuation to lift their writing off the page e.g. ‘We were sailing hard at 23 knots (very fast!) through perilous and ice cold waters.’
This writing process will begin with an iWrite chat at home. This is a chance for your child to;
The most important reason for the iWrite chat at home is to develop their thought process... If they can’t discuss and verbalise their ideas, how can we expect them to write them down?
Here are some ideas for how to do it:
After this, students will need to write a plan for their iWrite time. This plan needs to include;
This plan will be beside them during this writing time so the more ideas and vocabulary they have, the more successful their writing will be. I hope you will enjoy joining in with this learning.