Murray Gadd Writing

Our Senior team had a fantastic session with Murray Gadd, looking at our writing programme. We talked through what successes we had been having, and what has happened that has had us tearing our hair out.

He helped us pull apart and unpack writing samples from our target learners.

Discussion with group

He then ran a writing workshop with a group of those kids, all year six boys. He spoke to them about how impressed he was with their writing that he had seen. He pulled one of their pieces of writing, a persuasive text about why they should have golden time.

Brainstorm of success criteria on board.

He had a discussion with them around what the purpose of the writing was. (Establishing the topic). What did that mean? What kinds of things would we need to see? (Developing some content).

He worked with them to establish some criteria for what needed to be included. In this case:

• beginning, middle and ending?
• make sense?
• sounds right?
• best words? (persuasive words)
• polite? (Spelling and basic punctuation)

He was short on time, but in the time he had, he got the akonga to identify positives in the writing. They then identified improvements. It was a really positive experience for all learners involved. He was drawing the ideas out of them, rather than just giving them (which is so easy to do!).