Let's Write : Activities to develop writing skills for 7–11 year olds

Let’s Write provides teachers of literacy with activities that are both stimulating and easy to use in conjunction with the different types of writing that pupils are expected to do in key stage 2 of the new curriculum. It offers readymade resources for hard-pressed teachers, particularly inexperienced teachers, supply teachers and non-specialist. The book is divided into four main sections, each focusing on a particular type of writing – personal writing, persuasive writing, writing to inform and creative writing.

Coverage includes:-

• Autobiography, biographies and diary entries,
• Newspaper articles, instructions, advertisements and speech writing
• Creative writing, including narratives, play-scripts and poems
• A separate section on Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation, which is designed to help teachers to prepare pupils for the new English test.
• Games and activities aimed at extending pupils’ vocabulary

Let’s Write offers a wealth of suggestions for approaches to developing primary school pupils’ writing skills that will capture the children’s interest, while enabling them to improve their ability to express themselves in writing. It aims to meet the requirements of the new national curriculum for English at KS2 in a way that will develop the children’s standard of writing by presenting activities that they will find enjoyable and stimulating.

Throughout the book, the emphasis is on providing activities that will engage the pupils in a discussion of how texts are structured, before producing their own writing. John Foster suggests a range of imaginative tasks that both literacy specialists and non-specialists will find useful in developing children’ ability to write coherently and correctly.

Let’s Write includes:

• a clear explanation of the writing process with activities designed to improve pupils’ drafting skills
• examples of the different types of writing for pupils to analyse, which they can use as models for their own writing
• a range of imaginative ideas for writing tasks, together with suggestions of curriculum opportunities for practising particular forms
• writing challenges which can be used to stretch more able writers and thus to introduce differentiation by task, as well as by outcome
• writing tips, for example, on sentence structure and paragraph structure, appropriate to the different types of writing
• activities involving pupils in the assessment of their writing
• a section on writing correctly, focussing on grammar, spelling and punctuation
• a section containing games and activities designed to extend pupils’ vocabulary.

Let’s Write provides teachers with a lively collection of resources that will be welcomed by teachers and that will help to develop children’s writing.