Teaching for Mastery in Writing

Book excerpt: Teaching for Mastery in Writing provides a practical approach to developing mastery in writing which helps all primary children to develop their skills and inspires a love of writing. This innovative book follows an approach that integrates mastery into existing teaching sequences – an approach which aims to improve the writing ability of all children, not just the more able. Writing is a tough discipline for children in today's primary schools. The number of skills they are expected to learn is a source of amazement to many adults outside education. It is no easier to teach, not least because of the many and varied demands on schools, including the National Curriculum, SPaG tests, assessment frameworks and inspections. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that teachers focus on helping children become the most effective communicators they can be through the medium of writing. Throughout the book, Mike Cain promotes the importance of a classroom culture characterised by focused talk and reasoning, and provides lots of ideas for challenging children in their writing through the development of key learning dispositions and critical thinking skills.