Strategies to Develop Writing

• Modelled writing : demonstrate how writing is composed and refined, especially at word and sentence level.

• Shared writing : include EAL learners in shared writing activities, to shape and support their early attempts at writing in the whole class context.

• Shared reading of EAL learners’ writing: explicitly identify successful conventions.

• ‘Scaffold’ writing through writing frames etc. It is important that ‘scaffolding‘is scaled down: planned and viewed as a means to achieving independent writing.

• Structured questions will allow answers to be combined as continuous prose.

• Provide paragraph headings.

• Diagnostic marking : categorise the most commonly made errors in order to identify targets for the pupil and staff to work towards.

• Use sentence starters to encourage pupils to summarise what they have learned and then record it.

• Allow EAL learner, particularly at the early stages of fluency in English, to write in their first language, especially when planning writing or attempting to respond to questions on a text.

For more detailed advice see ‘Access and Engagement in English’ published by Department for Education and Skills, Ref: DfES 0609/2002.