Beginner Writing Club: One Sentence at a Time- The Train Ride

Writing can often seem daunting and so often an entire writing piece or story is the major outcome of a writing lesson. This is where I believe a change needs to happen. In order for students to feel confident in their writing they need to feel equipped with techniques, tools and ideas to create a successful sentence. Grammar and vocabulary are often taught alone, however, it should be taught to make sense within the writing. Writing is made up of many sentences.  Once a learner is confident in various writing techniques, they can apply this to any story or writing piece. In each class, we will use a method called sentence stacking. This method of writing is used in many successful schools throughout the United Kingdom. An idea or writing extract is looked at and modelled. The techniques used in the model are discussed and students brainstorm various ways to use this technique in different ways and in their own words. Ideas are gathered between all the students and then a sentence is built.  Together and independently we will then create effective and engaging sentences.  This class is open to students of all writing abilities however, students should be able to write a simple sentence by themselves. Some of the techniques we look at are repetition, similes, onomatopoeia, alliteration, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, synonyms and question words and phrases to name a few. 

In this class, students will be writing a sweet story about a child and a Mum going on a train ride on the way to Granny's house. They will describe the views along the way.  Come and join the journey and get immersed in this descriptive short story. We will be using pictures based on the story, 'The Train Ride' by June Crebbin. Students do not need a copy of this book as we are only using some of the pictures in the story as inspiration for our writing. Each week there will be two video lessons uploaded onto the classroom page. In each lesson, we will explore various writing techniques and outcomes and I will model this for students so they know exactly what to do, and are free to change theirs as much as they want or stick closely to my model. By the end of the seventh week, each student will have a beautifully written, top-quality essay that will be full of important writing tools.  It is important that students write their six writing chunks at the end of each week if they can.  Students are welcome to send in their weekly writing at any time during the week.

Lessons will be uploaded on the classroom page as an unlisted youtube link. When the link is clicked- the lesson will play.

This story is for a Year 1 (UK level- 5-6 years old) student. If English is not a student's first language or if the student struggles with writing then this will be perfect for beginner writers of any age.