IMPACT IN LEARNING Welcome to the Year 2 workshops on recount writing – Thursday 26 th and Friday 27 th February 2015.

What are the aims of the programme?  To increase the opportunities for learning at home.  To develop the partnership between home and school.  For school to share information with parents and carers about teaching and learning at school.  To contribute to raising attainment in writing.

Before the workshop – your child has been assessed on their ability to write a recount. In this workshop – you will be taken through what a recount is and how you can develop your child’s writing. You will be shown how to use the pack of supporting resources. You can work alongside your child. For the next 5 weeks – you will be given a new piece of work to complete at home each week with your child. This will need to be handed in on the Thursday morning of each week so that any areas to focus upon can be identified and new homework set for the following day. At the end of the 5 weeks – you will be informed of the progress your child has made and you will be invited back into school to share successes. What does the programme entail?

Parents and Carers can have a huge impact upon the attainment of their child. Why should parents become more engaged in their child’s education? The research of Charles Desforges.

What impact can the programme have upon attainment? The following slides show the accelerated progress made by a Reception child over the 5 weeks of the programme. The first piece of writing was from week 1 and the second from week 5. 60% of pupils can make progress at this rate, if parents and carers continue to engage with the programme for the whole 5 weeks.

What is a recount? A retelling of events in time order. Diary entries, a write up for a science experiment or a piece of writing about a school trip are examples of recounts. There is an exemplary recount in the pack – My Saturday shopping trip.

What is the structure of a recount?  An introduction – the basic questions are answered i.e. What? Where? When? Who? Why?  Middle paragraphs - describing the events in time order. You will continue to answer the above questions but with more detail.  An ending – you will summarise the event and express an opinion.

What are the language features of a recount?  Use sentence openers to say when events happen.  Use the past tense mainly.  Add detail e.g. by using adjectives.  Use connectives to join shorter sentences e.g. so, because, as.  Express feelings.  Use a range of punctuation.

Let’s get started! The introduction –  Think about an exciting day in the half term holiday.  Together, use the clown planning sheet and the pen to answer the basic questions.  Now, use the answers to the questions to write your introduction on the sheet. Make the sentences in the introduction clear. Think about what you are going to put in your sentence and practise saying your sentence out loud, before you write it down.  Next, read, check and change it (if you need to).

©Impact in Learning 2006

The events in time order – Make a start on writing the recount of the day in the half term holiday.  Keep thinking about when, what, where, who and why – as this encourages them to add detail.  Continue to rehearse the sentence out loud before they write it and then to read, check and change it.  Use the resources in your pack – openers, connectives, adjectives and high frequency words.

Then OnMy LastSoonBut I NextFirst Another thingThe last time At lastIfAnother time

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The next 5 weeks?  This week they will take home the 1 st of 5 pieces of weekly recount writing homework.  Each week, go through the same process of planning, using the clown sheet, and then writing the introduction. After that, write the middle events section, in time order - use the resources in your pack, to improve the sentences.  Homework needs to be returned to school every Thursday morning so that it can be looked at by the teacher and an area of focus for next week’s work can be given e.g. ‘focus on openers’.  On Friday, the pack will be returned, containing the next piece of homework.

After the programme?  We will invite you back into school to share successes and to share some of the writing.  We will ask you to take the opportunity, if you have not already done so, to complete a Parent View questionnaire about the school.  You can keep the pack of resources to use with your child at home, in the future.

Thank you!  All the staff involved really appreciate you taking the time to come into school to attend the workshop and for the work that the IMPACT programme will incur for families, over the next 5 weeks.  Please fill in the questionnaire at the back of your pack and hand this in to a member of staff, before you leave, as your feedback is always valuable.  Please ensure you have added your details to the register, before leaving.