Due to the success of the Standard and Higher Writing Clubs, we’ve recently launched our new Mini Writing Club for younger ones. The club is aimed at beginners (Years 3 and 4) and is brilliant fun to teach. It sits alongside our two other clubs, for older primary children and secondary students.
Years ago, when I first started work at an inner London primary school, I taught the older ones (Years 5 and 6). But my head teacher believed it important to move around the year groups as a newly qualified teacher, to get a feel for the different challenges they present.
And oh my – the Year 3s and 4s were a shock to me. They buzzed with enthusiasm and energy, but needed more support than I was used to and I found their often erratic written work a struggle to mark at first.
Teaching writing is a huge passion of mine and I am particularly interested in sharpening children’s technical skills (while maintaining the fun of it all). Over the years I have learned so many strategies to support younger children and the launch of our Mini Writing Club is my way of sharing this knowledge. It takes up exactly 15 minutes a week of your child’s time (either on zoom or in their own time with a short video version of the lesson). On Fridays we send them a little video where we talk directly about their work – being hugely positive and giving them small steps to improve on their work next time. And it really works.
In our younger years, fluency, confidence, vocabulary and spelling are all developing and there is so much to take on board. It is hardly surprising that some find it overwhelming and just do not know how to start; whereas others let their thrilling ideas run away with them and their attention to detail vanishes.
The Mini Writing Club addresses sentence structure, misplaced capital letters, handwriting formation, writing that floats off the line, higgledy-piggledy letter sizing and fear of the blank page. Of course the fun of it is broadening the children’s vocabulary with precisely chosen words and boosting their confidence and fluency.
If your child could do with a bit of help in this area do not hesitate. Go to www.griffinteaching/the-writing-club for more information. The club costs £29 per month and there is no commitment involved.