Ros Wilson’s VCOP Neil Bowker

Neil.bowker@dulwich-shanghai.cnYear Two Teacher

What is VCOP?

VCOP is a teaching and learning process that rapidly raises standards in

children's writing through fast, fun, lively teaching activities.

What is VCOP?

4 generic targets:

Vocabulary

Connectives

Openers

Punctuation

How do you hook the children’s interest?

“The evil Sergeant Sabotage is out to destroy

the world; removing all punctuation to wreak chaos in our language. He takes

every colourful and exciting word from our sentences,

sending all the school children across the world into a bored stupor, so he can take over the world.”

And these are our four superheroes!

What’s the hook?

To capture the students’ interest the four superheroes have been developed. The idea is that they help fight Sergeant Sabotage by making sentences more interesting and accurate.

Violet Vocabulary

Violet Vocabulary’s aim is to improve the children’s ability to use interesting word choices. She is more commonly known as Wow Woman.

Activity Time!

Vocabulary

Using the whiteboards in the middle of the table, write as many words to describe the character in the picture on the next slide...

Vocabulary

green

Popcorn!

When you want the children to give you one word answers quickly, such as adjectives, shout popcorn and the children will continuously give you words to write on the whiteboard. This is great for brainstorming and saves time.

WARNING- this takes practise and clear rules!

Captain Connective

The Captain holds the team together and without him writing can be repetitive and boring holding no power over the reader at all

His greatest power is to link ideas together providing a net to catch the reader.

Connectives

The use of connectives help the children join sentences together and make their writing more detailed and interesting.

and but

soif

however

which

because

althoughdespite

Even though

also

then

meanwhile

Let’s play bingo!

Draw a 2X2 grid on your whiteboards

Write down four connectives…

Fantastic Opener

He jumps up and tells the reader when something is happening. It’s his job to hook the reader in and keep him reading.

Teaching time connectives using Fantastic Opener is very effective.

Openers

Activity 2

Face a partner. Think of as many time connective words as you can.

Then

Doctor Punctuation

If capital letters and full stops are missing, or in the wrong place writing, is weak. It will not have the power to grab a reader.

He reveals what characters actually say with speech marks.

He helps make work flow and make sense to the reader.

Punctuation

Musical PunctuationGrab some instruments and give them out to the children. When the children feel that punctuation should be punctuation, they make a sound with the instrument.

Kung Fu PunctuationShare a story on the IWB. The children use Kung Fu Panda to show what punctuation should be in the gap.

When to use VCOP…

Participating in quick, regular activities helps the children build up a bank of

knowledge and makes them more likely to use it in their writing.

Rainbow Writing- self and peer assessment

You can use the four different colours of the superheroes to underline where the

children have used them in their writing. This is helpful to pick out what they have done well and to create targets for future

writing.

When to use VCOP…

• Morning activities

• Carousel of skills activities

• Mental/oral starters

• Success Criteria

• Editing writing

• Self and peer assessment

Let’s look at some examples…