Empowering young writers: the impact of ESSENTIALWRITING at Highover JMI School and Nursery

As the English leader in a primary school, few things excite me more than the arrival of a fresh batch of new books. Adding the school stamp and handing them over to each teacher, knowing the joy and learning they’ll inspire, feels like giving a truly meaningful gift. This feeling is even more rewarding when the books are as diverse, high-quality, and thoughtfully chosen as those from the English team at HFL Education – books referred to in ESSENTIALWRITING, the writing scheme we introduced this year. 

Top 5 wins:

1. Thought provoking and attention-grabbing texts
2. CPD incorporated
3. Reduced workload
4. Models for writing included
5. Pupils writing for a clear and meaningful purpose

For us, one of the most exciting and welcome aspects of ESSENTIALWRITING is the increased focus on representation and diversity in the carefully selected texts. These books do more than teach English. Not only do they serve as high-quality models of language and imagery, but they also broaden our pupils' understanding of the world, immersing them in diverse settings and perspectives through a wide range of characters and experiences. This deep engagement becomes the foundation for great writing, helping children develop an authentic voice as they truly connect with the texts. We want our pupils to encounter role models and protagonists they can relate to; stories that serve as both mirrors reflecting their own experiences, and windows into different perspectives. The literature chosen within ESSENTIALWRITING achieves this beautifully, at the same time as providing excellent models for the craft of writing that everyone can access. 

Many of the books are thoughtfully linked to key areas of the curriculum. For example, in Year 4, the texts India, Incredible India and Africa, Amazing Africa explore the rich and diverse cultures of India and various countries across Africa, challenging common stereotypes about these vast and varied continents. These are studied alongside Take a Bite, a delightful book that delves into food, recipes, and cultural traditions from 26 different countries, offering pupils an engaging and global perspective. Other books link to map reading, historical figures and growing plants, for example.

As subject leader, I am grateful for the subject knowledge teachers are gaining from using ESSENTIALWRITING. Teachers at Highover, both new to the profession and experienced, have found that using the planning is CPD in itself. I booked my team onto the ESSENTIALWRITING webinars so I could ensure consistency of approach across classrooms which aids progression and transition across year groups. 

The unit plans are detailed and clear which reduces workload for our teachers at Highover. They take the teacher through steps (rather than lessons) which build towards a final piece of writing with a clear purpose, for example to entertain or to inform. The steps ensure that teachers can move at their pupils’ pace, which removes the temptation to plough on without ensuring depth of understanding or stopping for consolidation as required.  

This supports Ofsted’s findings from the Strong Foundations research, recommending that schools should:

‘Make sure that the curriculum clearly identifies the foundational knowledge and skills that children will need for later learning’ and that we must ‘give children sufficient high-quality opportunities to practise using foundational knowledge and skills so that they become fluent.’

Another particularly popular aspect for our team is the annotated written models which teachers can use when modelling writing, as well as the ‘think out loud’ bubbles which help you model the writing thought process. 

HFL Education has designed the plans with a focus on writing for a purpose such as ‘to persuade’ or ‘to entertain’. This means our children are thinking more about the effect they want to have on their audience and less about features of a specific genre which can often lead to tick-lists of success criteria. Persuasive speeches and letters always get the children fired up to write with a great sense of purpose and authority. 

For example, the Year 6 unit which uses the text Talking History, inspires children to write a speech about something they are passionate about, from banning social media to reducing traffic on the roads. Our Year 6 pupils performed their speeches as part of a BBC-television-show-inspired Room 101 game show with their parents as the audience. A judge decided which speech was the most persuasive and therefore what would be sent to Room 101. (In this case, macaroni cheese won against spiders, traffic jams and loud noises!)   

In Year 3, Stella and the Seagull evokes children’s understanding of the impact of plastic waste and their passion to do something about the problem. Our Year 3 pupils wrote and sent letters to the prime minister to explain the problem and implore them to make changes. With texts as engaging as this, pupils realise that the purpose of their writing is to share their voice - we can teach language choices that are linked to their own interests. 

At Highover, we moved away from providing a ‘list’ of success criteria for writing a while ago. I We found the approach to be very limiting. It takes away the creativity, encouraging a ‘writing by numbers’ approach. We were inspired by James Durran’s ‘boxed’ success criteria. As soon as we started using these, we found it had an impact on the quality of what pupils produced. The ‘boxed’ layout helped children focus on the  intended impact on the reader and gave them space to collect ideas and examples to include in their writing.  ESSENTIALWRITING plans have developed this idea further by creating ‘pyramid’ criteria which we are now using in all year groups. Here is an example from the Year 6 narrative unit Night of the Gargoyles:  

We view oracy as a key skill for our pupils. At Highover, we believe good talkers make good writers. We want our pupils to be confident to go out into the wider world and present their ideas and articulate their opinions confidently. The ESSENTIALWRITING text choices are excellent prompts for oracy discussions around topics ranging from friendship, gender stereotyping, feeling left out, discrimination and environmental changes to the views inspired by famous historical figures such as Martin Luther King and Greta Thunberg. Children find these topics relevant and relatable and can’t help but become immersed in discussions based on them. Thankfully, ESSENTIALWRITING incorporates oracy into the planning so that we can weave it naturally into the writing process for each unit. This leads to writers who are engaged and motivated.  

With thanks to Sophie Driver and her colleagues and pupils at Highover JMI School in Hitchin for so generously sharing their reflections on the implementation of ESSENTIALWRITING in their school this year. How wonderful to see such brilliant writing! Keep an eye out in the summer term for part 2 of this blog, where Sophie dives into the school’s writing for pleasure journey. 

If you are interested in finding out more about ESSENTIALWRITING – and how you can develop both children’s and teachers’ knowledge, motivation and confidence in the craft of writing - then do read more.