Writing moderation

Here, in England, it is writing moderation season. A time of year that at the start of my career (and particularly as a novice English leader) filled me with dread. My experience then was of schools crossing their fingers in the hope that they were not selected for moderation, full of palpable anxiety and trepidation when the moderator walked through the school gates.

So how wonderful to now recognise that, for so many, this is no longer the case. This time last year, I was lucky enough to join Laura Bailey and Pobble’s remote moderation writing team to find out how they are literally re-writing the narrative about a statutory process which is just so much more than this. It is a celebration. A conversation. A professional learning experience. A moment to pause and reflect. I wrote about my initial experiences of writing moderation re-imagined over on my website, do take a look:

So, what further ideas have I discovered in my second season of writing moderation, and how do I feel these could be helpful to you as a teacher or a leader? Below are two suggestions which I hope can be actioned with minimal time spent preparing. Think of these more as considerations ahead of the next academic year, where moderation is thought of as a sustained professional learning process, rather than standalone sessions rooted in accountability rather than celebration.

In today’s glimmer, I would like to continue to shine a light on the positive aspects of a process which may not immediately bring these thoughts to mind. The moving away from a stigma of moderator vs school/leaders/teachers towards the view of the process being collaborative. One that is led by the teachers and rooted in the celebration of the writing of pupils (and the carefully considered learning experiences which have been crafted by their teachers). To do this, I would like to explore my observations ideas and practical suggestions through the lenses shared below.

I have been in the position, many times throughout my career, of organising writing moderation staff meetings. These have certainly been successful and supported teachers and leaders in making robust judgements and increasing their confidence in the Teacher Assessment Framework at the end of KS2.

However, it is in more recent years that my understanding of the importance of regular conversations about pupils’ writing has really risen to the surface. It was not that I wasn’t keen to talk about the achievements of the writing of the children in my class, or that I didn’t regularly bend the ear of my colleagues to discover if their class were still not securing the correct punctuation of speech (practising with dried pasta anyone??), it was more that the practice was not ingrained as one where we were linking our conversations to the judgements we might be making. This applies for teachers across the school, not just in Year 6. Conversation may be fragmented and land on one particular skill, rather than acknowledging the variation of choice and application which made the writing successful (or less so). It is the inadvertent feature spotting and box ticking which can fragment discussions about the success of a piece of writing, rather than the focus on intended audience and purpose, which will strengthen it.

• So, what may be considered to ensure conversations across the year (and the year groups) are purposeful and support teachers’ summative judgements?

  • Create banks of exemplar writing within your school. This is such a powerful tool to commit to creating. In England, the government provide assessment exemplifications for the standards at the end of KS2. These are an excellent resource which all teachers (not matter the year group they work in) should be familiar with. Building an internally moderated (and externally moderated if you have undergone this process and have validated collections) bank of writing allows regular conversations about progress and attainment to be directed back to your anchor.

  • Make time in staff meetings to celebrate writing. When extended pieces of writing are completed, protect time to read these aloud and celebrate them with your colleagues. Make reading pupils’ writing aloud a regular habit. Settle into the role of the audience. The recipient of the child’s writing. Discuss with your teams the impact. How did the writing make you feel and how did the child achieve this effect?

  • Ensure all teachers are familiar with the Teacher Assessment Framework for writing (or similar document(s) which you use for summative assessment if you are not using the British national curriculum) so that they are getting into the habit of assessing the pupil’s ability to write for an audience and purpose, before drilling into the nitty gritty of grammar and spelling.

  • Frame conversation in celebration. Normalise and promote the habit of celebrating what individual and groups of children are achieving. From those informal conversations in the classroom to the little notes home to parents and carers. Writing achievements may also be a celebration point in school assemblies, visits to senior leaders or other significant adults in school and even on displays or school websites. Let’s look to what our young writers can do ahead of immediately jumping to their next steps.

To continue to grow this culture of writing for purpose and audience (ideally effectively and with a deliberate application of chosen grammatical devices and the inclusion of powerful language) talk around authorial choice needs to be central. The tools we empower pupils to achieve this with are secondary. Creating a culture of reading and sitting with a piece of writing, ahead of pulling it apart in the process of analysis, is key.

• So, how are considerations of audience and purpose at the centre of curriculum choices and conferencing conversations with pupils?

  • Explore your model/mentor text with the pupils by considering the effect the writing has on them as a reader. The authentic experience of reading a text which elicits a reaction. If a text hopes to create suspense, explore why a gasp was omitted after a certain line. If a paragraph hopes to entertain and causes pupils to laugh out loud, what was the particular word or line which teased this out? Exploring writing through concepts is a powerful way to shift curriculum experiences to consider audience and purpose centrally. The Opening Doors approach to English is grounded in using a set of strategies and principles which invest in curious explorarations. Do take a look at writing outcomes from Opening Doors units on the Crown House website.

  • Carefully consider the outcomes of the writing experiences you are curating for your pupils. During this writing moderation season, it has been so wonderful to celebrate the range of choice which pupils are given within their writing. Strength in writing has often been visible when teachers are able to share a little around the journey the writer went on and the volitional choices which were available for them to make. This may take the form of choosing their own book to review, creating a new character for a story or deciding which element of a topic interested them most ahead of writing a non-chronological report.

  • Exercises which value reading aloud. This has been one of my main takeaways from this year’s set of moderation visits. The moment when the teacher themselves, or another adult involved in the session, brings the pupils words to life. Lifts them off the page, taking note of the deliberate punctuation choices and sentence lengths. It is through the reading aloud that the writer’s intentions come to fruition. Making time and space for oral rehearsal, peer responses and subsequent editing is just as valuable.

  • Invest in training. I hope that my insights and subsequent ideas and practical suggestions are useful as you reflect on you writing moderation opportunities across this academic year. Equally, there may well be elements of what I am suggesting where some extra support may be welcomed. I could not recommend highly enough the dynamic and responsive packages and training options which are provided by Pobble. These materials aim to invest in teacher confidence over the year and across the key stages. A model which seeks to empower teachers and celebrate writing achievements. Do have an explore for yourself and contact Laura Bailey to find out more, this will be a conversation which you will be glad that you took the time to have, I am certain:

Pobble Moderation - Find Out More