Context

The school has been supported by the LA for a number of years and by the Primary Strategy Literacy Consultant as part of the Making Good Progress pilot. The school serves a mixed catchment area and a third of the school population have English as an additional language, many at stage 1. There is high pupil mobility.

Attitudes towards writing and attainment before the project

The school has prioritised writing as a key action over the last couple of years. Writing attainment has been increasing but pupil perceptions showed that pupils viewed writing as part of literacy rather than a cross curricular activity. Staff have been working hard to embed the teaching sequence for writing across the school and develop cross curricular links. As part of the Making Good Progress pilot the school has developed writing moderation and one-to-one tuition.

Aims & principles

The Everybody Writes Day was organised to bring the whole school together for a day of writing and other activities with the theme of pirates. It was designed to engage all pupils and staff and stimulate writing and show cross curricular links in a fun and interesting way.

In Practice

• Staff meeting to look at Everybody Writes materials and decide on theme.
• Year group planning to decide on writing and other work focus.
• Staff organised resources for the day. The pupils were not informed and came to school to find it had been taken over by pirates, all in costume.
• The outside area was extended to include a sandpit around a wooden boat and writing area.  FS and KS1 outside areas reflected the theme.
• During the day lots of writing activities took place along with cross-curricular work such as maps, ICT etc.
• Each class produced some pirate writing including poems based on sea shanties, letters, instructions to find treasure, pirate messages, information texts. Photographs were taken around the school.
• During the afternoon a pirate newsletter was produced for parents containing photographs and pupil work and copied so that all pupils took one home with them at the end of the day.

Partnerships

All staff were involved in preparing the pirate school and dressing up. The LA Literacy Consultant was involved in planning and co-ordinating the newsletter to go out to pupils.

Outcomes

There were many written outcomes, some of which were included in the newsletter every child received. The school displayed a selection of these along with photographs. Outside writing and the sand play area were developed alongside the existing wooden boat structure.

Following the pirate day, the school had an Ofsted inspection; the following comes from their report -

“The most recent of these events, an exciting Pirates’ Day, was still successfully motivating pupils during the inspection. The school has rightly identified that there is further scope for extending activities such as these to forge interesting links between subjects and make learning more relevant to pupils’ interests.”

Attitudes and attainment after the project

The pupils had a great day and really enjoyed the writing around a theme. They shared the newsletters with families and friends. The work produced on the day was a good standard, but as yet it is too early to look at lasting impact. If we did this project again we would include the wider school community.

Legacy

The school has decided to hold a regular Everybody Writes Day and produce a regular school writing newsletter. The outside sand and boat areas exist as lasting legacies.

Resources

• Pirate resources from a range of sources including sparklebox -  (http://www.sparklebox.co.uk)
• Sandpit and sand along with seating areas were taken from school budget approx £600
• Consultant support

Final thought

“Everybody Writes has reminded staff and pupils that writing is fun and purposeful.”

 

---

Comments on Pirate Day at St James’

Be the first to comment on this project