Please come and tell me about The Big Write

[piprabbit]

What exactly is it and is it widely used?

DD has been full of her "Big Writing" sessions of the last few weeks but I'm struggling slightly to understand what it is all about and what the assessments mean.

Thanks.

What a load of bollocks it is. When I was in teacher training (5 yrs ago, can't believe they're still advocating this) 'best practice' was putting a picture of a flickering candle on the whiteboard while playing Mozart in a darkened room and telling the class to get on with an extended piece of writing that they had planned the previous lesson. Well 1) most of the class had forgotten what to write about 2) most were distracted by the music 3) noone could read their writing properly in the dark! 4) virtually none of my Y2 pupils (to be fair, most were in fairly low-ability groups) could go 50 minutes writing non-stop on a stupid topic with no relevance to them.

GRRRR. I hope the framework for these sessions has changed since then but to be honest, with the little faith I have in modern teacher training methods, I really doubt it.

It's just an extended,independent,piece of writing .Sometimes weekly ,or fortnightly and often done at the end of a topic/weekly scheme -so the knowledge & skills have already been explored and the big write will address how well they are being used Usually it will be marked and levelled but just as part of ongoing assessments

It's done at our school and the kids love it - the most recent one was a retelling of a book they'd been reading and discussing for a couple of days - they read the book, talk about the book, do drama activities based on the book, do some planning and then do the write - my son is in Y1 and wrote (I'm probably biased) a really good piece. His teacher said that all the kis got on and wrote in a very focused way.

Thanks everyone - that does seem to make more sense. No candles, darkness or music as far as I can tell.

Big Writing isn't modern teacher training methods ,as claimed by moonface, rather it has lots of good old fashioned common sense ideas packaged up by a very experienced ex teacher.
music, candles, special paper and pens often feature but not in all schools

www.andrelleducation.com/big-writing/what-big-writing-is/

we have a Parent Workshop on it next week, so hopefully I'll know more about it then .. I do know DD has done something called Big Write this year Y1, but having read mrz link it doesn't seem they are doing it fully, e.g. she has never had prep work to do at home ..
Look forward to finding out more though, DD's writing has certainly come on hugely in Y1, so may be related to BW, who knows

Thank for the link mrz

blue - I wish our school did parent workshops on this sort of thing . Would it be cheeky to pick you brains once you've been? Thanks

My DC school do the big write weekly from yr2 onwards.

We've done the big write for the last three years, and the kids are sick of it. As are the teachers.

We have a 45 minute session before break of VCOP: vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation. The way ros Wilson wrote it meant they were designed as a starter on Monday to Thursday with the writing on Friday, but we do it as one very dull block.

Kids go out to break and we light candles, play Mozart (meant to be good for stimulating the brain) and darken the room. Children come back from break ready to write in floods of tears due to normal playtime crap then they wrote independently for 30-45 minutes.

When we mark, we go through and highlight all uses of the VCOP and give a total, which the children then have to try and beat. Our marking system takes about 15 minutes per book.

Most of the children in the school seem to hate it. They don't like not being able to discuss their ideas. When I taught further up in the school I liked it more as I had 30 minutes or so of uninterrupted time to mark books, but lower down the children cannot and do not sit silently for that length of time.

DD is Y4 and only seems to have recently started the scheme, perhaps they are targetting the older children? VCOP sounds familiar though and seems to be getting her thinking. Thanks

We've done Big Writing in KS2 for 8 or 9 years now and the kids love it, we do a mixture of Big Talk & Talk for Writing on Reception and KS1.

The way we work sounds very different to how juniper describes probably because it has evolved over that time to suit our needs and isn't strictly by the book. We definitely don't give scores for the children to beat and our marking system is very manageable. Children in Y5 & 6 are given a level for their piece of writing and told what they did well and what they can improve.

My DS has just done The Big Write in yr 4. It's been fab - never seen him so enthusiastic about doing a piece of work ever! They had the choice of some subject titles which we were given in advance to discuss at home.

DS says they did have music but he liked it and it fitted in with their class topic.

Surely lots depends on the skill of the teaching in terms of how interesting it is. I've seen my son's 'big writing' and it's lovely to see him challenged by writing an extended piece and using his imagination. He says he likes the 'head space' to think.

My DD (year 2) used to hate it but now she can write fairly well and sort of spell she doesn't mind doing it. The year 2's have been doing a holiday topic and invited my Mum in to talk about holidays in the 1950s. The following week I was given letters written by the children during the big write to give to Mum. They were obviously written really carefully and thoughtfully. My Mum was very touched

I think we do it too frequently, to be honest. Extended writing for writing stories is nice, but it doesn't work for some genres. Poetry is particularly difficult, and with the whole 'how many points did you get?' mentality, it's hard to compare a poem with a story. It feels like our lessons on mon-wed are basically preparing for big write, and Friday's is reviewing.

I'd be far happier to do it every two or three weeks- basically as the end of each unit.

Perhaps it works better for us because we have never used the units and teach writing through a class book.

Our school has been doing Big Writing for three years. We've just started Big Red and Big Maths began two years ago.
We do Big Writing on a Thursday so Friday is used for feedback. Although I told my Head when she quizzed me as to why I wasn't giving feedback on Fridays that my Year Two children need feedback on the next session of Big Write - when it has relevance as giving feedback has absluely no effect when it's given days before they actually need to put their targets into practise. Also, it was sometimes impossible to mark every Big Write the night before being a parent myself!
Personally I love what it is trying to achieve but find the workload (like Big Maths and Big Read) is enormous. We don't have to mark every paper using the criterion scale but we do have to highlight and trying to highlight 30 pieces in a night can take up to 3 hours!
Also the kids are getting fed up with it as are the teachers. It has lost it's appeal and 'magic' and kids feel like they are being tested every week!
Everyone in my school feels Big Write should start in Y2 as they begin it in Summer Term Y1 and should be maybe fortnightly or even once a month or half term. I know of some nearby schools who have reduced the number of times they do it because it has stopped having the desired effect.

I know my dds year 5 and year 3 do this once or twice every term. On our recent holiday in half term dd2 kept mentioning that she hadn't finished her big writing and would therefore need to get it done when she returned. In fact it took her another couple of days to do so she was kept from doing a PE lesson. :(

Big Writing is normally a time limited piece of extended writing

There seems to be a lot of variation about how it is applied in schools which sounds like why it is successful in some places and less successful in others.

Lots of schools paid £25 for the book and try to teach it