Supporting writing across a range of schools

TT Education have worked with a large number of schools, many of which have requested support with writing.  A question we are asked, on occasion, is "so what does writing support look like for a school?"

To answer, it is important to note that at TT Education we pride ourselves on our experience, our professionalism - but most of all our flexibility.  Therefore, there is no simple answer to how we support a school as each school is different in need, size, relative staff experience and demography of the pupils.

Here, however, are some of the common elements we try to include - applied flexibly to meet the needs of each school:

• Model lessons: A consultant delivers literacy lessons in your school to your pupils, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approaches in real terms
• Planning support: Working with literacy leads to ensure engaging, fun and creative writing opportunities are built into what we do - to ensure sustainability into the school's future
• Training and twilights: from full-day courses like Raising Attainment in Writing (click here), Raising Attainment in Spelling (click here) and Achieving Greater Depth in English (click here) - all of which can be offered as whole-school INSETS (or online as live or on demand training), to twilights where we cover elements of the above courses (also available as live or on-demand online training), we cover all elements of the writing process, to ensure staff are well-informed, experienced and armed with practical activities to stimulate writing in all years and all subjects

All of this, underpinned by a rigorous quality assurance process, professional consultants and demonstrable IMPACT across the UK - and beyond.

Leechpool primary had a wide-ranging package of support from TT Education which started with writing support.  Our team delivered a number of model lessons, supported the subject leaders and senior leaders with climate walks to establish expectations and led twilights and full-day INSET to ensure every member of staff had a 'toolkit' brimming with ideas to inspire future writers.

The writing developments in the school were later augmented by training, coaching, monitoring and leadership consultancy in grammar and spelling - thus ensuring that staff (and, thereby, pupils) were able to increase the impact of the initial writing support across the whole school.

The headteacher, Nicola Davenport, was so delighted by the IMPACT we were able to help her staff develop she recommended our services to a local collaboration of schools and the Local Authority, and later became one of TT Education's first Strategic Partner schools - schools that host our events and promote them locally.

Rise Park Academy in Romford were originally two separate schools (Infant and Junior) and asked TT Education to support both schools in improving writing outcomes in both phases.  Similarly to Leechpool, we put in an intensive package of support initially around writing (including model lessons and leadership support), spelling, grammar and reading.  This was over five years ago.

Having gained overwhelmingly positive responses from staff, the Executive Headteacher (Carolyn Fox), then tasked TT Education with also supporting maths at the school - as well as senior & subject leadership as they progressed towards forming an academy.

TT Education continue to support Rise Park Academy; curriculum development, subject leadership support and coaching, strategic leadership for the vision and future growth of the academy - and they became one of out first School Improvement Club members in late 2019.

St George's Primary in Hull