Excellence in education
Talk for Writing
At Pioneer Village School we use the Talk for Writing program (T4W).
T4W is a unique process that uses spoken activities to develop writing skills. Quality writing is created by first expanding and developing students’ oral language skills and then teaching the necessary steps for exceptional sentence, paragraph and text construction.
T4W is an evidence-based whole school approach to teaching written expression. It supports all learners and learning styles has the potential to dramatically improve students’ writing. The approach also offers students with learning and language difficulties an opportunity to develop stronger writing skills.
Many students find the writing process, both fiction and non-fiction, extremely challenging. Students may have wonderful ideas, but struggle to get their thoughts onto the page. Even those who read reasonably well can experience difficulty with written expression. Feedback from students indicate that they find T4W ‘fun, engaging and motivating’ and teachers have noted definite improvements in the quality of students’ writing.
The underlying principles of Talk for Writing are:
- A systematic model of speaking, listening, vocabulary and sentence patterns the students need
- Oral rehearsal: students internalising patterns of language by talking the text before writing
- Making learning visible: the work created during the progress of a unit is clearly displayed
- Co-construct the learning: students are involved in activities that deepen their understanding, making them independent thinkers and writers.