PGPRI 7004 – Assignment 2

Talk for Writing: Do Primary Pupils and Teachers See the Same Benefits?

1. Introduction

Research in this assignment took place in the Primary phase of a two-form entry all-through

academy in central Leicester, where numbers of children from minority ethnic groups were

typical when compared against national averages. A majority of children were White British

or spoke English as their first language and came from the immediate local area. The

proportion of children with special educational needs, eligible for free school meals or

supported through school action were all more than twice the national averages (OFSTED,

2013).

I worked with a Year 2 class of twenty-seven in the academy where attainment

ranged from Low Attainment children achieving a 1C to Higher Attainment children working

at a 2B in writing. Seven children were on school action or school action plus, and there

were also two children who had Speech and Langauge or Special Educational Needs. Due

to the wide range of attainment and factors affecting it the class were taught in a variety of

settings and by different staff. Higher Attainment children were taught in a booster group four

times a week, whilst Low Attainment children were taken out in groups and individually for

reading and writing interventions three times a week. The children were also taught in set

Phonics groups by different staff as most children were still on Phases 3 and 4, whilst a few

were recapping Phase 6 before moving onto preparation for the new curriculum.

My specialist area of study that will impact this assignment is Literacy. I wanted to

explore current avenues schools are taking to teach Literacy, exploring any current popular

schemes of work or influential concepts and ideas that have been published to assist

teachers. It was providential that the Primary phase of the academy already had a scheme

of work in place upon my arrival. They used Pie Corbett and Julia Strong’s Talk for Writing to

teach Literacy up to Year 4 and my initial observations of teaching showed me children and

staff were familiar with how the scheme ran in school. This meant that I could adapt my

research to what the children were already familiar with and could also get support from staff

by following the academy’s literacy policy and use of Talk for Writing.

Before going into the academy I was interested in how schemes of work for core

subjects were carried out in school as they held a lot of promise when being introduced to

them through lectures, professional focus days and recommendations from teachers I knew

personally. In this assignment I wish to explore the claimed benefits of the Talk for Writing

scheme specifically analyse them against my own research from the Year 2 classroom. I

chose three children from different attainment groups to track during the study who were

approved by my placement mentor and head of the Primary phase. Ethical approval did not

go out to parents as the head of the Primary phase reiterated the fact that I was not

changing the children’s working environment and therefore this would not cause concern

with parents. The focus group’s writing levels started at a 1B to a 1A when I first tracked

them in mid-January. At the start of March the levels were spread from a 1A to a 2C. The

three children sat apart in class out of choice and were not in the same friendship groups.

This made analysis if their work and opinions easier to interpret, as I knew they were not

influenced by each other’s answers and classroom conduct. The focus children will be

referred to using pseudonyms for the purpose of anonymising them and their work

throughout this assignment.

2. Literature Review

For this assignment I will be focussing upon the key approach I followed in the Year 2 class

during a non-fiction Talk for Writing unit, and interactions and observations of the focus

children I worked with more closely. Reading shown in this section displays my own

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interpretation of how Talk for Writing operated on a theoretical and pedagogic level in the

classroom. My analysis is being done in this way in order to help explain the improvement

across the unit of work, and to analyse my own teaching and children’s learning.

Talk for Writing is an approach to Literacy developed by Pie Corbett, and through the

three main stages of imitation, innovation and independent application children are able to

imitate key language needed to write for a particular topic before embarking on reading and

analysing the language (Talk for Writing, 2013). The three stages incorporate several

strategies within them that professionals can use in their practice, but there is no prescriptive

progression of teaching, but instead suggested ideas for teaching particular elements of

innovation within each non-fiction text type from the current curriculum.

An aspect of the imitation stage is that children orally learn narratives to add to their

linguistic repertoire, and one way to support this internalisation is through marrying language

patterns with actions (Corbett & Strong 2011, p. 8). This marriage opens up access to

several types of intelligence children may have such as linguistic, logical-mathematical and

bodily-kinaesthetic intelligences. Gardner et al. (1996, p. 205 – 209) identifies key

characteristics amongst these to be the ability to processes linguistic information such as

phonology and syntax more easily, especially as these are both initially abstract elements of

spoken literacy. Willis explains that those with bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence specifically can

use body movement to connect information and solve problems (2007, p. 55). Being able to

cater to these intelligences regularly in the classroom can help streamline thought patterns

of specific learners, and as children become confident actions and related memories or

information can be recalled more quickly as less-important scaffolding is pruned (Willis 2007,

p. 152).

The above model of pruning can be related to rote and logical learning styles, where

both have a focus on repetition for heightened levels of recall. Each of these styles has had

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it resonances with this study, with the prior’s outcome for errorless recital and the logical

style’s focus on associative recall through a passage’s meaning (Björgen 1964, p. 11). In

either case when teaching under either style there is the probability for a monotonic and

genotypic response, both of which can be defined as a “associative strength” and “strength

of response” by Björkman (1958, p. 23 – 24). Associative strength refers to how well a

learner’s response is extrapolated from an original link, whereas strength of response relates

more to an individually generated response. In education communication through any style

in the classroom lacks a personal exchange but is replaced by signs, and this is extremely

important as this is how children will constantly observe abstract signs in their everyday lives

throughout their adulthood (Sadler 1974, p. 121). It can be argued that this paradigm paired

with the repetitious nature of rote learning and the logical style’s call for organisation

contributes to the creation of concrete schemas. However Tuckey and Brewer (2003, p. 101)

argue that associated memory developed in such a way can lead to a rise in biased

schemata that affects further memory development and processing. As a teaching

practitioner it is important to monitor and regulate such bias so that it does not affect future

learning in the classroom.

After looking at intelligences and approaches used to address them, the next stage is

to look at an outcome for teaching with such theories in mind. Associated items such as a

pair of words in a list, or neighbouring elements of paragraph in a report become bonded,

where the first item will gradually help recall the second without need for scaffold (Rock

1957, p. 186). In terms of outcome this form of scaffolded recall can help children reproduce

elements of words or texts quicker in writing, which can then be measured under the

associative strength. Ebbinghaus (1964, p. 52) suggests that through a higher number of

repetitions during learning schemata can be engraved more deeply upon a learner. Over

long periods of time from initial repetitions in learning under logical or rote styles information

may have degraded into a partial state, however it is possible to argue that this is not

unbeneficial. Ebbinghaus (1964, p. 62) states furthermore that despite lapse in time an

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original piece of learning or information can still exist vividly. It is these vivid traces of

learning that can potentially trigger a strong strength of response as proposed earlier where

the learning generated is different from the original model. However, Postman and Keppel

(1969, p. 454) raise the point that any differences in the amount of original learning retained

may reflect in the quality of the original input. This statement alone is key when analysing

children’s work where we should remember the quality of the teaching input.

3. Methodology

Originally I had planned to carry out action research for this assignment, however as the

school already had Talk for Writing in place I felt better to take a case study approach since I

would not be able to significantly change practice in the classroom (Klein 2012, p. 2). Recent

action research has also taken a look into the political side of schooling, whereas my focus is

directed towards academics (Dick 2010 cited in Klein 2012, p. 2).

The extensive approach of a case study allowed me to look at the set properties of

the Talk for Writing scheme in school and any correlations it has with the original scheme

and its proposed benefits (Swanborn 2010, p. 1 – 2). By properties I refer to ideas put

forward when taking children through the imitation, innovation and independent application

stages set out by Corbett. In addition to this the case study model allowed me to look at is

the emic behaviour in the classroom between the focus children I observed, looking at why

they did what they did and the potential influences from input (Woodside 2010, p. 1). Due to

the nature of the study where I will be looking at children’s behaviours in response to input I

have also been able to adopt a qualitative approach into this work. This element of the

research means I have the freedom to interpret classroom actions without them being

blurred by empirical research practices prior to analysing work (Yanow 2006, p. 5). However

for the purpose of this study empirical measurement of learning is still a must as it provides a

more contextual measure of achievement in modern day learning environments where

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children are levelled under the current curriculum. As Kuhn (1961, p. 161) states, a majority

of studies with qualitative data often lead to quantified results, as this helps narrow

qualitative information in clearer answers or generalisations.

Once I had chosen my research stance I had to consider the ethics of how I collected

the data through the research process (Gillies & Alldred 2012, p. 43). Before entering the

school I needed to consider approval and whom I would need it from. As the study initially

started as action research before moving to a case study I had to renegotiate who I would

need consent from as the study progressed. Miller and Bell (2012, p. 61) say that as well

renegotiating consent throughout a study that it is also important to remember cleared ethics

forms do not mean a researcher should forget ethical issues during on-going research. Once

I had received the ethical approval form from the University (see Appendix 1) I engaged in

regular conversations with professionals in the school in order to make sure I tracked

possible ethical issues with my research and those involved.

During my research period on TE2 I aimed to collect various information viewpoints

to inform my analysis of the Talk for Writing approach. My starting point was to look at the

influence of the scheme on written work. When I was teaching eighty-percent of the time I

planned a full unit of work with my teacher mentor that would be taught using the scheme. At

the start of the unit I conducted a cold writing test where children wrote a non-chronological

report about a topic they had studied recently. In order to make sure that the quality of input

was a similar as possible to the end test I only discussed the thematic content of what

children would write, and briefly assessed their own, unassisted understanding of report

writing. I made sure to replicate this format of questioning when children carried out a hot

write at the end of the unit. I discussed this part of the research with the primary phase

leader, who confirmed that I was not changing the learning environment significantly and that

I had her permission to collect anonymised pieces of work from both the hot and cold tests.

My second point of action was to gain verbal data from both teachers and children

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respectively. After considering the best way to do this I decided to take a macro informal

questioning approach that included the focus children during whole-class plenaries, whilst

taking a micro informal interview approach with teachers. I planned to triangulate data from

these three sources, whilst baring my own teaching in mind under my mentor’s direction.

This is where my own qualitative, interpretive methodology took place in the study. I believe

that this qualitative finalising is important as it leads towards quantitative data that gives a

clearer outcome regarding the study’s key question.

4. Analysis and Presentation of Data

As stated previously I applied the Talk for Writing approach to a two-week unit of literacy

centred around a non-chronological report on dragons (see Appendix 2). As I taught I

observed how children reacted at the various stages of the taught approach. Initially the

children read the text aloud and then answered open-ended questions for me to ascertain

what they understood from the reading. As all three of the focus children told me the text

was about dragons I used funnelling questioning method to see if they understood the text

type. They knew they had not just read a story, yet none of the children said it was a report,

but one child did identify that the text told us information and I thought this would be the case

at the start of a unit.

As the outcome of the unit was for children to write a report, I let the children lead the

next part of the lesson where we assigned actions to the report. A majority of the actions

were logical, such as a sleeping pillow motion when reading “that only sleep at night”.

Children were very active and excited through the lesson, and the opportunity to apply their

own associative meanings to a text stood out to me as a fantastic technique that supports

Sadler’s (1974, p. 121) view that personal exchange in the classroom is replaced with more

abstract signs. At the end of the lesson I questioned the whole class openly about whether

they enjoyed learning texts in this way, as they were familiar with it having been taught under

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Talk for Writing all year. The focus children’s responses specifically were transcribed by a

teaching assistant and were written up by me, where I interpreted what learning style the

children were referring to (see Appendix 9). The general response leaned towards the

kinaesthetic element of learning, and that by enabling the children to move and make actions

a more memorable, associative link was made in their learning. However children quickly

became tired of this as the report was read with actions daily when possible prior to literacy

lessons. Despite this more children begun to join in up until the point I stopped modelling

actions at the front of the class and reading, and children were able to read the text alone.

The build up to reciting without assistance supports Björgen’s (1941, p.11) categorisation of

a rote learning style. I asked the three focus children if they would like to be the teachers

nearer the end of the unit, and model the actions with storyteller hats. They all said they

enjoyed this as they were able to be the teachers, and from my point of view this allowed the

children to take ownership of their learning, further creating a strong associative link with the

language in the report writing.

During the innovation stage of the unit I followed a similar structure to help reinforce

the learning children had done in the imitation stage. We focused on changing the key

language of the text such as the verbs, adjectives and settings whilst keeping sentence

starters the same. This meant I was able to provide children with familiar language frames

for their own writing, and I could also differentiate work by reducing or increasing the scaffold

depending on a child’s confidence as a writer. The children had seven lessons between the

cold writing and hot writing and there is a significant difference between them when looking

at the focus children’s work (see Appendices 3 - 8). In the cold test all three focus children’s

writing had a huge variance in terms of sentence structure. Sam’s work (see Appendix 3)

held the most structure as he spoke aloud or drafted his ideas on a whiteboard before writing

them down, however he often stuttered whilst giving answers or reciting his work. I identified

him as having issues verbalising, and he was one of two EAL children who had parents who

spoke minimal English. Karen (see Appendix 4) claimed to enjoy writing but she lacked

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subject knowledge and regularly asked for the names of objects she could articulate

physically and make initial sounds. For me her physical and phonetic articulation was

enough to see that further kinaesthetic input would benefit her, and she already used actions

tied to linguistic or phonetic patterns to trigger recall. Her writing also lacked structure, but

she was concerned more with putting ideas onto paper and had no issue reading her own

work the way it sounded mentally. Finally, Laura’s work (see Appendix 5) showed me that

she understood the expectations of what to include in her writing but her own personal

understanding lacked when we engaged in dialogue about her next steps. I provided all the

children the same support in that I directed them to a scaffold on the board with prompts of

what they had learnt about the Vikings and sub-headers that we discussed. Only content

was discussed and not formatting, and this was the same for the hot write. All three children

said they found the cold write incredibly hard as did their peers because they struggled to

pull subject knowledge from their memories and regularly asked adults for information they

had already learnt. The teacher mentor said they had a short gap between the cold write and

the last time they had studied the Vikings in a Talk for Writing format, so this leads me to

believe that repetition is crucial to leaners retaining more information over time, and that Talk

for Writing does support this approach.

After conducting the cold test and beginning teaching under the Talk for Writing

approach I then informally interviewed staff in the primary phase to see if their opinions of

the approach and its benefits fell in line with what the children liked about it. From an ethical

standpoint I had made the interview process open and informal, and made it clear that staff

did not have to participate and that I would merely write anonymised notes. Appendix 10

shows an extract of statements each teacher made and the relevant questions I asked, and

like with the children I interpreted their responses. Once again the theme leaned towards

kinaesthetic learning and repetition, but the teachers’ reasoning shifted from the children’s

views of being independent to being able to support and assess them in more ways. I shared

the same consensus as many of the teachers since being able to give children a kinaesthetic

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prompt when they asked for help felt far less like funnelling the answers to a child, but

instead it felt more like encouraging children to recall information themselves. In this

instance the sign, action or kinaesthetic link can be seen as a trace of an associated

meaning to an element of the original report on dragons to help children remember the

structure. This form of support helps reinforce Willis’s (2007, p. 152) point that once we have

learnt something well enough with developed associated meaning we can prune excess

information so that recall is much quicker and information retained is much finer. Another

point made by staff was that as children used elements of the original report to help write

their own, it made the assessment process far easier by using the original text as a baseline.

There are pros and cons to this concept, such as that it may be easier to set children next

steps by showing them the text and how it differs from their own. On the other hand this is

extremely prescriptive and I do not feel this promotes the level of creative writing Corbett

encourages with Talk for Writing. As a practitioner I also found myself losing sight of APP

level descriptors and curriculum objectives, and sometimes focused on how much children

had replicated the text before re-centring myself to trying to help children further innovate.

This is where I begun to see the two different types of response that Björkman (1958, p. 23 -

24) outlined where children either replicated the text with their own alterations (associative

strength) or had created an individual piece of writing inspired by the original report (strength

of response).

At the end of the unit the children had a lesson to produce a non-chronological report

on dragons, where they had the same input as in the cold test. There were similar issues

that I considered concerning the age group I was teaching as my previous experiences were

with Year 6, who were much more independent. Nevertheless most children wrote

independently, and at face value all three of the focus children produced a greater amount of

work, which was presented much more clearly and neatly. Their work was far more similar

as well when using the original report text as a baseline to see where their structure and

style had come from.

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Sam's writing (see Appendix 6) held one similarity in that it contained a lot of

corrections and errors that came from struggling to clearly verbalise. However his structure

significantly improved, signalled first by the use of sub-headers highlighted in green.

Additionally he clearly leaves a line after each sub-header, which was explained to all

children throughout the unit but not consistently used in work. Highlighted in yellow on Sam's

work are his sentence starters, where I have highlighted his varied uses of starters. It is clear

as his work progresses that he makes less corrections, although there are still some

inaccuracies and sentences that do not make complete sense when read aloud. In

comparison from the last piece of work that was moderated at a 1A he was levelled at a 2C

for the non-chronological report due to his increase in varied language and consistent writing

style. Sam also commented that he was proud of his work because it looked like the report

we read as a class. This supports my analysis of his work that it represents his strong

associative strength throughout the unit, especially as he used the actions during his writing

to remind him of the writing sequence.

There was also a large improvement in Karen’s work (see Appendix 7) for similar

reasons. At a glance her presentation reveals not only a much clearer structure to her writing

but also a far clearer understanding of the report format. Again I feel that she has shown me

a strong associative response, as her word strongly resembles the original text, however the

moderation of the work showed she went up a sub-level to a 1A. This was due to similar

reasons to Sam in that her level of consistency was far higher than before as was her

vocabulary when looking at her attempted uses of descriptive language. In particular her use

of camouflaged was taken from an earlier innovation lesson in the unit that homed in on

descriptive language using toys and multi-media to help build the children’s exposure to

what they were writing about. Karen specifically mentioned this lesson when showing me her

work and how proud she was of the specific word, and her use of it supports the idea that a

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strong associative link can produce an individual, good strength of response as in this case

this part of her work is independent from the original text.

Finally, Laura’s hot writing (see Appendix 8) also showed similar improvements

however she did not progress a sub-level like the other focus children. On the surface she

also had neater presentation, but upon reading her work I could see that she had not

understood the purpose of the writing and had written partially recalled sentences from the

original text. In addition to this a teaching assistant informed me that they assisted Laura but

that she became frustrated not knowing what to write despite being present for the entire

taught unit of work and making good associative responses during teaching. Looking more

closely at her work I could see elements of other lessons where we had worked on

description such as her use as “the size of a dog” or “brown as a branch” from input on

similes, which were the same similes she had used for that lesson to describe a monkey.

Laura remained frustrated for the rest of the writing session and resulted to looking at her

peers’ work as well as asking for help several times. To my surprise when I gave her the

actions as prompts (like I did with all the children) she could remember the sub-headers, but

she still struggled greatly with actual content, and when I asked her if she knew what we

were writing there was no response.

5. Conclusion

Focusing upon the initial question of this study I believe that children and staff do see the

same benefits, however I would argue that what I have seen and taught benefitted children

when learning new concepts, and not necessarily preparing them to write. This leads me to

the main issue with the study, that being of how the Talk for Writing approach can be taught.

After talking with the teachers in interviews, the literacy coordinator and my mentor I realised

they all taught literacy differently under the scheme. They all used Corbett’s baseline texts in

a similar way to me and carried out cold and hot writing as well, however it was the

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innovative stage teaching that differed between practitioners. I now understand that this is

the case across the country, as Talk for Writing has many creative and helpful ideas that are

not designed to prescriptive but a springboard for teachers to cater to their classes. As I only

spent six weeks in total with my class I found it difficult to specifically cater lesson to them

outside of differentiation by support and outcome. However this is an important sign post for

teachers that just because an approach has received significant praise just as Talk for

Writing has it will not work for everyone straight off the page.

The kinaesthetic aspect of the unit I taught was shown to be the most popular

amongst the children and adults. Linguistically linked actions fit in abstract-signs that are the

basis for a lot of children’s learning in classrooms where there is a great need to learn

unknown words and concepts and apply them with haste. Depending what actions are used

this can help children see concepts and meanings of words in action, which will help build a

stronger link. Under the way I ran the taught unit, repeating the actions made concepts and

links stronger for most children but I have already highlighted issues of boredom and losing

sight of objectives with this. Despite her more varied use of language in her hot write Laura’s

confusion shows that I did not address the purpose of writing enough throughout the unit,

which reinforces the issue of varied teaching of acclaimed approaches like Talk for Writing.

From an assessment standpoint I think that again children and teachers see the same

benefits, but that they are not necessarily beneficial. For children like Laura, being taught to

replicate a text and it’s elements can skew or even lose the purpose for writing if not

monitored by the teacher as I learnt and this would need to be integrated into planning

supported by an approach or scheme, and not based around it.

Due to restrictions with children and their families in the class I did not take a larger

sample of children’s writing to assess, and if this study were to be taken further I would

definitely use larger samples in order to gain a clearer perspective. Another trend amongst

the three focus children was that their work had associative strength, and not a good

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strength of response. I would like to see if this trend continues with older age groups of

children who potentially have more developed individual writing styles, as a I believe the

younger children who are earlier in their cognitive development may be more malleable

when encouraged to write in different ways. Future samples may also consider the teachers

and how they taught, as I have only identified the benefits specifically in one classroom from

one taught unit. I also believe that with further research more benefits to the Talk for Writing

approach could be uncovered by observing and analysing the various ways it is used to

support teaching and learning of various literacy practices.

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6. References

Björgen, I.A., 1964. A Re-evaluation of Rote Learning. Oslo, Universitetsforlage.

Corbett, P. and Strong, J., 2011. Talk For Writing Across The Curriculum. Open

University Press, Maidenhead.

Ebbinghaus, H., 1964. Retention as a Function of the Number of Repetitions. In:

Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. Dover Publications, New York.

Gardner, H., Kornhaber, M.L. and Wake, W.K., 1996. Recent Theories of

Intelligence. In: Intelligence Multiple Perspectives. Harcout Brace College

Publishers, London, p. 202 – 242.

Gilles, V., and Alldred, P., 2012. The ethics of intention: research as a political tool.

In: Ethics in Qualitative Research. SAGE, London, p. 43 – 60.

Klein, S.R,. 2012. Action Research Methods: Plain and Simple. Palgrave MacMillan,

Basingstoke.

Kuhn, T.S., 1961. The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science. In:

Isis, 52 (2), p. 161 – 191.

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Miller, T., and Bell, L., 2012. Consenting to what? Issues of access, gate-keeping

and ‘informed’ consent. In: Ethics in Qualitative Research. SAGE, London, p. 43 –

60.

Postman, L., and Keppel, G., 1969. Part Six: Measurement of Retention. In: Verbal

Learning and Memory: Selected Readings. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Rock, I., 1957. The role of repetition in associative learning. In: American Journal of

Psychology, 70 (2), p. 186 – 193.

Sadler, J.E., 1974. Communication. In: Concepts in Primary Education. Allen and

Unwin, London.

Swanborn, P., 2010. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? SAGE, London.

Talk for Writing, 2013. About Talk for Writing, Talk for Writing. Available from:

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/about/ [Accessed 24 March 2014].

Tuckey, R.T., and Brewer, N., 2003. The Influences of Schemes, Stimulus

Ambiguity, and Interview Schedule on Eyewitness Memory Over Time. In: Journal of

Experimental Psychology, 9 (2), p. 101 – 118.

Willis, J., 2007. Looking into multiple intelligence brains. In: Brain-Friendly Strategies

for the Inclusion Classroom. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development,

Alexandria, p. 51 – 61.

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Willis, J., 2007. Review and Test Preperation Strategies for Diverse Learners. In:

Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom. Association for Supervision &

Curriculum Development, Alexandria, p. 151 – 171.

Woodside, A., 2010. Case Study Research: Theory, Methods and Practice. Emerald

Group Publishing Ltd, Bradford.

Yanow, D., 2006. Thinking Interpretively: Philosophical Presuppositions and the

Human Sciences. In: Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and

Interpretive Turn. M.E Sharpe, Inc, Armonk.

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7. Appendices

These have been removed for Data Protection and due to LinkedIn document upload

data limits. For a copy with any appendices get in touch.

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