The Writing Project

The Writing Project is designed and delivered by colleagues from Humberstone Junior Academy in Leicester City who are an Outstanding school and the founders of Odyssey Educational Trust. The team has a strong ethos of providing high quality English CPD based on their current successful classroom practice and leadership. As a national support school, this includes an NLE, SLE’s for English and a national Oracy Leader with a particular interest and passion for the teaching of Novel Study and all things English. The team has expertise in designing and leading large scale bespoke professional learning projects in partnership with Local Authorities, Trusts and Teaching Schools and were the 2019 winners of the UK Literary Association School of the Year.

The Writing Project was very much designed with the needs of class teachers in mind. Projects blend an evidenced based approach to writing with relevant, subject specific pedagogy, delivered through creative and well designed teaching sequences. There is a high focus on classroom application and participants will “walk through” effective teaching sequences and units of work which can be adapted for their own contexts. Participants will learn how to:

• Effectively assess pupils’ writing to identify gaps in learning

• Develop expanded teaching sequences based on the principles of effective learning which focus on meeting pupils’ needs

• Apply evidenced based approaches to teaching and learning in their classrooms

• Understand the progression in writing skills within and across year groups

• Develop effective ways to review the impact of these strategies on pupil learning

• Support pupils to make enhanced progress in writing and reduce gaps in learning

Participants will also work towards an exciting action research project with a target group of pupils, which demonstrates the project impact and provides strong evidence of impact for self evaluation.

Project Modules: Checking for Understanding, Direct Instruction for Writing, Oracy and Vocabulary, Curriculum Mapping alongside fiction and non fiction teaching sequences which bring the theoretical elements together.

Project Impact: Projects are adapted throughout, aligned to the principles of assessment for learning and responsive teaching. Teacher feedback is essential to our ethos and our work. Qualitative feedback from the Learners First 2020 cohort has indicated:

• Over 93% of teachers participating thought the project met its objectives very well

• Over 94% of participants rated teaching sequence work as effective or very effective

• Over 93% of participants felt that they could confidently implement taught strategies as a result of their participation in this project

Who is this project for?

The project has produced successful outcomes for teachers at all levels. It could be used to support early career stage teachers with subject knowledge and pedagogy or more expert practitioners who may be team leaders or subject leaders. It is expected that schools may wish to align this project to their Pupil Premium Strategy or Recovery Curriculum Priorities.

“Teaching should be the top priority, including professional development, training and support for early career teachers and recruitment and retention.” EEF Pupil Premium Guide