Focus on Learning

In Year 1 / 2 the students have begun using ‘Must Haves’ as a scaffold to enhance their writing skills.

The ‘Must Haves’ are based upon VCOP (Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers, Punctuation) strategies relating to the text being taught, for example, Openers are a focus when writing a Persuasive text. 

Mrs Bartholomew explicitly teaches and models to the class what the ‘must haves’ will look like. The students are then given daily opportunities to practice and apply these into their writing.

Each Thursday following ‘Big Write’ the students self-assess their writing using a modified Student Criterion Scale. They identify if they have used the required ‘must haves.’ After the ‘must haves’ are  highlighted, students select an area of their writing to improve and set a new writing goal.

Attached are examples of how the students use the coloured highlighters to identify the ‘must haves’: Blue for Openers; Green for Punctuation and Pink for Connectives.