7 Ways to Support Young Children to get Writing Right from the Start

by Anjali Patel

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PrimaryEnglish

Learning to write is a complex process, relying on both social and cognitive development, not to mention physical dexterity, but it’s every child’s entitlement.

Taking possession of the written word can open up a world in which children can cultivate identity, an understanding of the world and their relation to others. Fostering a community of writers is hugely rewarding and has enormous impact on children’s lives.

Put simply, writing is talk written down. It allows us to express ourselves and communicate ideas with an audience distant in time and space. It does depend, then, on an author’s ability to translate the gestures, facial expression and intonation prevalent in spoken language into written text.

The written word can live on long after the spoken word has been forgotten, but meaning is made powerful for a reader through the writer’s choice of language, structure and voice. It is not straightforward, it can be baffling, but it is full of possibilities.

The way we approach writing in the early years can influence children’s engagement in writing throughout their lives. So how do we go about inspiring our young writers while ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to master written language?

1 | Writing creatively

In young children, the simple joy of expression through writing can be incentive enough. Where one would expect communication to be the driving force, you may see children engaging in writing or mark-making activities for their own satisfaction, generally without an intended audience.

A child might spend weeks writing endless missives and these might be read and appreciated by another, but the primary incentive for writing can be the child’s need to express emotion rather than garner response.

Writing, drawing and mark making is invaluable in helping a child make sense of their own lives or the wider world. If this incentive is nurtured, children will naturally engage in free and creative writing.

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns which will impact on their spoken language and allow them a natural route into writing. Allow them access to “the tunes of language [that] ring in their ears and sing in their voices” (Holdaway).

6 | Talking about books

Conversations about books help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made meaningful, personal and pleasurable. Choose high-quality texts that link to interests or expand horizons, with rich language and illustrations that provoke response and inspire children to revisit.

A well-chosen text can provide not only the rich language models or structures with which to play in their own writing but also offer interesting audience and stimulus.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Reading aloud is a kind of performance. It’s helpful to think about the best way to read it and ‘lift it off the page’ in order to engage children and enable them to respond to the tunes and the meaning.

5 | Absorbing language

Reread and revisit, allowing the children to respond and absorb written language. Read aloud books with strong ‘tunes’ but that are rich in vocabulary and beyond a child’s oracy.

Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns which will impact on their spoken language and allow them a natural route into writing. Allow them access to “the tunes of language [that] ring in their ears and sing in their voices” (Holdaway).

6 | Talking about books

Conversations about books help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made meaningful, personal and pleasurable. Choose high-quality texts that link to interests or expand horizons, with rich language and illustrations that provoke response and inspire children to revisit.

A well-chosen text can provide not only the rich language models or structures with which to play in their own writing but also offer interesting audience and stimulus.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Model writing everywhere, linked to all areas of learning and throughout your provision. Show children and parents it is inherent in daily activity. Demonstrate the act of writing but, crucially, write alongside children, modelling strategies you draw on to articulate ideas and overcome difficulty; empathise with your young writers.

4 | Reading aloud

Read aloud to your children every day, as many times a day as you can. Reading aloud helps children to broaden their repertoire as readers, becoming familiar with a wider range of genres and the work and voice of particular authors.

Read aloud with enthusiasm, emphasising the prosody, patterns and intonation or a range of texts including stories, non-fiction and poetry.

Reading aloud is a kind of performance. It’s helpful to think about the best way to read it and ‘lift it off the page’ in order to engage children and enable them to respond to the tunes and the meaning.

5 | Absorbing language

Reread and revisit, allowing the children to respond and absorb written language. Read aloud books with strong ‘tunes’ but that are rich in vocabulary and beyond a child’s oracy.

Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns which will impact on their spoken language and allow them a natural route into writing. Allow them access to “the tunes of language [that] ring in their ears and sing in their voices” (Holdaway).

6 | Talking about books

Conversations about books help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made meaningful, personal and pleasurable. Choose high-quality texts that link to interests or expand horizons, with rich language and illustrations that provoke response and inspire children to revisit.

A well-chosen text can provide not only the rich language models or structures with which to play in their own writing but also offer interesting audience and stimulus.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

When children are given extensive opportunity to read and respond to powerful texts, this experience naturally influences their own writing choices. They develop an awareness of the reader. They are becoming authors.

3 | Writing everywhere

Children’s starting points can be wildly disparate upon joining an early years setting and this will be reflected in their early attempts at writing.

Some children will have enjoyed talk-rich households, a bedtime-reading routine and experienced writing in action. Others will not have benefited from the same immersion in spoken and written language, nor understood the value of writing yet.

How we support parents to contribute to their child’s literacy development cannot be overstated. As Iram Siraj (2015) affirms, “We can’t afford not to.” The provision we put in place and the experiences we plan for home and school can shape our young writers and their aspirations.

Model writing everywhere, linked to all areas of learning and throughout your provision. Show children and parents it is inherent in daily activity. Demonstrate the act of writing but, crucially, write alongside children, modelling strategies you draw on to articulate ideas and overcome difficulty; empathise with your young writers.

4 | Reading aloud

Read aloud to your children every day, as many times a day as you can. Reading aloud helps children to broaden their repertoire as readers, becoming familiar with a wider range of genres and the work and voice of particular authors.

Read aloud with enthusiasm, emphasising the prosody, patterns and intonation or a range of texts including stories, non-fiction and poetry.

Reading aloud is a kind of performance. It’s helpful to think about the best way to read it and ‘lift it off the page’ in order to engage children and enable them to respond to the tunes and the meaning.

5 | Absorbing language

Reread and revisit, allowing the children to respond and absorb written language. Read aloud books with strong ‘tunes’ but that are rich in vocabulary and beyond a child’s oracy.

Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns which will impact on their spoken language and allow them a natural route into writing. Allow them access to “the tunes of language [that] ring in their ears and sing in their voices” (Holdaway).

6 | Talking about books

Conversations about books help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made meaningful, personal and pleasurable. Choose high-quality texts that link to interests or expand horizons, with rich language and illustrations that provoke response and inspire children to revisit.

A well-chosen text can provide not only the rich language models or structures with which to play in their own writing but also offer interesting audience and stimulus.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.

Provide materials with which children – and adults – can draw and write about anything that interests them in any form they like, at home and school.

2 | Writing for an audience

With time and opportunity, children will take pleasure in a reader’s feedback and begin to link writing with communication. They will begin to develop ‘writer identity’ whereby they make informed choices to support the reader experience.

Writing is taught effectively when children see the use in it; when there is real, authentic purpose; when there is an audience that authenticates their voice, be it themselves or another reader.

When writing is part of daily life, linked to play and engaged in by a community of writers, it becomes inherent to a child.

When children are given extensive opportunity to read and respond to powerful texts, this experience naturally influences their own writing choices. They develop an awareness of the reader. They are becoming authors.

3 | Writing everywhere

Children’s starting points can be wildly disparate upon joining an early years setting and this will be reflected in their early attempts at writing.

Some children will have enjoyed talk-rich households, a bedtime-reading routine and experienced writing in action. Others will not have benefited from the same immersion in spoken and written language, nor understood the value of writing yet.

How we support parents to contribute to their child’s literacy development cannot be overstated. As Iram Siraj (2015) affirms, “We can’t afford not to.” The provision we put in place and the experiences we plan for home and school can shape our young writers and their aspirations.

Model writing everywhere, linked to all areas of learning and throughout your provision. Show children and parents it is inherent in daily activity. Demonstrate the act of writing but, crucially, write alongside children, modelling strategies you draw on to articulate ideas and overcome difficulty; empathise with your young writers.

4 | Reading aloud

Read aloud to your children every day, as many times a day as you can. Reading aloud helps children to broaden their repertoire as readers, becoming familiar with a wider range of genres and the work and voice of particular authors.

Read aloud with enthusiasm, emphasising the prosody, patterns and intonation or a range of texts including stories, non-fiction and poetry.

Reading aloud is a kind of performance. It’s helpful to think about the best way to read it and ‘lift it off the page’ in order to engage children and enable them to respond to the tunes and the meaning.

5 | Absorbing language

Reread and revisit, allowing the children to respond and absorb written language. Read aloud books with strong ‘tunes’ but that are rich in vocabulary and beyond a child’s oracy.

Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns which will impact on their spoken language and allow them a natural route into writing. Allow them access to “the tunes of language [that] ring in their ears and sing in their voices” (Holdaway).

6 | Talking about books

Conversations about books help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made meaningful, personal and pleasurable. Choose high-quality texts that link to interests or expand horizons, with rich language and illustrations that provoke response and inspire children to revisit.

A well-chosen text can provide not only the rich language models or structures with which to play in their own writing but also offer interesting audience and stimulus.

When a child makes strong personal connections with a character, they are more likely to develop empathy, expanding their repertoire of emotional vocabulary and opening up a range of writing opportunities.

7 | Developing viewpoint

Pause at pivotal moments as you unfold a story, allowing the children to express and discuss their initial responses. When children have explored a fictional situation through talk or role-play, they may be ready to write in role as a character in the story.

Taking the role of a particular character enables young writers to see events from a different viewpoint and involves them writing in a different voice. In role, children can often access feelings and language that is not available to them when they write as themselves.

Teaching sequence: Blue Penguin

The carefully written teaching sequences created for CLPE’s Power of Reading in the Early Years programme enable practitioners to inspire a wide range of writing.

Here is a sequence based on Blue Penguin by Petr Horáček (Walker) – these approaches and ideas can be used with other rich picture books and are proven to engage even the youngest reader in the writer.

Introduction

Blue Penguin is Petr Horáček’s most philosophical picture book yet, focusing on themes around identity and belonging.

Blue Penguin is not accepted by his community because he looks different from them. In his lonely dreams he envisions a white whale which moves him to make up a song. Its spiritual quality leads Blue Penguin to friendship and the inspiration to create a new song that everyone can share.

The textured illustrations, which feature a colour palette focused on blue and white, perfectly evoke the mysticism of the snowy landscape.

Continuous provision

• Create a messaging centre in which the children can exchange missives with the lonely and distant penguin.
• Create a place to record and store dreams or wishes, where songs can be composed and shared.
• Collaborate to create the world of the story in a tuff tray or outdoor area, developing and enriching vocabulary and understanding whilst building the Antarctic setting. Include sensory exploration using ice packs, ice cubes or frozen water beads.

Inhabiting the story

• Make provision for small world play to promote talk about the shape of the story. Encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot, and to make decisions about how they re-create scenes.
• Make accessible open-ended materials for role play, as well as cameras and thought or speech bubbles to record or scribe children in role. Through re-enactment and role play, children will inhabit a character or story and practise their narrative skills.

Introducing and igniting vocabulary

• Stories like this introduce children to distant lands and settings they may never meet, and language that transcends their conversational experience. Reading aloud, digital stimulus, sensory resources, visualisation and artwork will support their understanding and introduce or ignite vocabulary.
• Play the children a film of the Antarctic, eliciting their initial responses – what they notice, the sights and sounds, how they would feel to be there – and scribe their responses.
• Allow the children to draw what they visualise using chalks, annotating artwork with descriptive words and phrases, perhaps memorable from the story. Conduct a gallery walk in which the children talk about and compare each other’s representations. Seize opportunities to repeat, clarify, recast and enrich the children’s language choices – with repeated exposure in different contexts they will come to possess the vocabulary and use it independently.

Developing enquiry

• Develop an ethos in which children ask more questions than they answer.
• Have a letter arrive from Blue Penguin appealing for the children to find out if he is a real penguin because the other penguins say that he is not. Invite the children to share what they know about penguins and note anything they would like to find out about penguins in general or blue penguins in particular.
• Compose statements and questions to be investigated on a displayed chart and provide a variety of resources nearby that children can use to draw or write about anything of interest they find out and can share. Create illustrated fact files that could be sent with an accompanying letter.

Deepening understanding of a character

• Ask the children to say what they notice about Blue Penguin’s character, his outward appearance, how he is feeling.
• Scribe the children’s ideas on a large outline drawing of the character – outward appearance on the outside and feelings on the inside. Revisit this at key moments throughout the story in a different colour pen to capture the children’s perceptions of his emotional journey.
• Allow time for the children to explore illustrations in the book before reading the accompanying text. Scribe their responses around a copy of an illustration.
• In this book, there are several opportunities to explore character motivation and emotion through drama. Ask the children to create a ‘freeze frame’ or silent tableau of such scenes then ask each child to voice their thoughts in role as their character. Encourage the children to record these voiced thoughts on thought bubble templates.

Collaborative poetry

• Choose a moment in a character’s emotional journey that is particularly poignant and open to expressive interpretation, such as Blue Penguin being left alone in the storm.
• Ask the children to relate this to their own experiences if comfortable to do so or stay with the penguin’s feelings. Play a sound clip of an ice storm using fabric or scarves to create the storm around the lonely penguin.
• Provide the children with a strip of paper on which can be captured a word or phrase describing his feelings. Combine the strips to create a free verse poem, and rehearse a performance reading with the children to convey meaning for an audience.

Writing to fictional characters

• Exchanging missives with a character is highly motivating for children. How might they support Blue Penguin in this case?
• Send letters, messages or packages to Blue Penguin or advisory letters to the other penguins in the colony. Take this opportunity to develop a friendship messaging centre for children to exchange supportive messages to each other.

Making personal connections

• Discuss the social setting of the classroom with the children and compare this to the penguin colony. Encourage the children to think about what they value, their identity, and what and who is special to them, and ask parents to help children make shrine boxes, created using annotated photographs, artwork, maps and objects. As the boxes are shared, and differences and unifying experiences celebrated, you might compose a class song of friendship with the children.

Book training or buy a subscription at clpe.org.uk/powerofreading and download free resources at clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources.