Comments written by Pupils about particular strategies used in English which helped their writing As you will read, some of our pupils commented about ways in which discussion helped their writing, that reading other people’s work helped improve their writing and also working with their own pieces of writing in detail and discussion with their teacher and peers.

I found that the best ways to improve my writing were the conversations I had with my teacher. So when they talk about my work and then actually go through some of what I have written, with the actual work in front of me and tell me what I have done wrong this helps improve my writing more. I do look at their marking but I know that I forget it or don’t always understand everything. But when they talk to me about it, I know what they mean and can understand it better.

When teachers actually give me a structure to my writing it really helps me to organise what I am going to write. So it then sets out my work and it helps me be clear so I know what I am going to say. So when I do not know where to start I end up not making sense, or know where to put my writing and my ideas get muddled.

When we learnt PEE it saved my life! I was so worried about my exams and then when I was told by my teacher to use PEE at every point and for every paragraph I then realised that this was a formula you could use every single time. So even when I wasn’t totally sure, I always analysed the quote and explained about the author’s intentions and knew I would be able to say something, as opposed to panicking and feeling helpless.

I found the process of actually writing using PEE as much as possible and identifying when I had used PEE in my writing was the most useful thing to help my literacy. I think the reason I did not do as well as I could at my GCSE’s is because I did not do enough practise at actually writing properly and for long enough. So when we talk a lot but then I do not necessarily write for a large amount of time then I do not feel as if I am getting enough practise at using all the things I have learnt. So I was not as experienced at writing as I could have been.

I liked doing practice essays at the end of units and also writing lots of example paragraphs to build up our knowledge of the texts before exams and controlled assessments. So, breaking down parts of a play or book and writing about them, improving our work having read through it and then adding bits to it as we read through a text. This felt like we were recording our knowledge, making sure it was well-written and made sense before actually writing a whole essay. It made it feel manageable. I felt like knowing how to do a single paragraph right then made me feel more confident I could do a whole essay like this.

I liked when we broke down ideas into small chunks, like in ‘Of Mice and Men’ when our teacher explored one character and we summarised it and explained what they meant, or how they represented symbols like prejudice or racism, sexism etc. This type of discussion that we had, where we were able to explore our ideas and have a discussion in which we then added technical terms like ‘themes’ and ‘authorial intentions’ meant I could communicate my ideas really clearly. This was so helpful, I remember it today and I am in Year 12. I just felt like I was working on ideas that I would later write about by discussing the novels, texts etc before we wrote in the exam.

I find that when we look at other people’s work and their examples of how they have written this is really helpful; so reading through other people’s essays. But what I find really helpful when doing this is not just reading it and feeling like I could never write as well as that but actually talking in groups or to the teacher about what has made it a good piece of writing. Even just making notes or annotations on the work pointing out things they have done really well. So I could then actually work out why it is really good and then be able to understand how to use that in my writing. I like more practical tips on exactly how to improve my work and exactly what I can use in my writing.

I want teachers to show me examples more of other people’s work and then a few of us in a group help them to improve it. So maybe we could work together to improve my work and then I know how well I have done and exactly what I am not doing enough of in my work. I sometimes wonder whether I am not writing well enough or am doing things differently to other people so find it comforting when I have class help/approval. When my teacher reads out other people’s work I always get great ideas on how to write and I think it helps my writing.

I like reading a piece of work and discussing with the class what we can do to make it better. I always feel more confident when I hear work read out loud and feel like I can improve it. It helps me to realise what I need to do in my own writing. But I do find it more difficult when I read a really good piece of work as I never feel I can improve it and that I will never be able to write like that.

I feel that my language has improved through reading a lot of books. Since I began reading more advanced books than I was before I learnt new words and new examples of language/description that I was able then to use in my writing. I have seen an improvement in my work since I started actually using these in my writing.

I felt that the practice of writing and doing more and more examples really helped my writing – I was able to become more confident at my work and know that I had experience of writing in essay styles. I sometimes felt that just writing out answers to questions and doing paragraphs didn’t give me enough experience at actually writing essays.

My writing improved when I took it slow and did not try to rush everything and get it all done as fast as possible. I realised when I wrote small chunks of writing and checked what I had written this really helped me. I then got a dictionary and checked my spelling. Then using the thesaurus I would make sure I had written using the best language possible.

The best thing that helped improve my writing I felt was when I had to give it to others to peer assess. I then knew that I had to go over my writing again and check its accuracy, spelling and general use of vocabulary because I did not want to embarrass myself if other people in the class read it and did not think it was very good.