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This is why I think the Single Paragraph Outline (SPO) from @TheWritingRevol makes so much sense. This is a Y11 student with a target level 4 (who in previous years I might have drilled on rigid writing structure) writing with more fluency than he did 6 months ago (1)
This lesson comes at the end of a sequence on why the 1585 colonisation of Virginia failed. Students had learnt a lot, and were asked to plan using the SPO. A template was put on the PPT and they constructed their own plan in note form (2)
The beauty of the SPO is that it focusses on topic sentences and concluding sentences. In this way, students are always focussed on the analytical direction of a paragraph and essay. This student's TS and CS weren't great, but they at least gave structure to his writing (3)
Moving from the SPO to a written paragraph is straightforward. Instead of contorting their knowledge to fit rigid structures, students can use complex sentences to enhance their knowledge and build powerful arguments (4)
In this case, the student has used a number of structures we have worked on in his writing. These allow him to express the details he had noted down in his SPO not as a list (we see this often) but in analytical prose (5)
As such the writing becomes a *decision making process* ( @bridiemcp opened my eyes to this) as opposed to the paint-by-numbers approach we see with rigid sentence starters and structures. Students actually start to think about how best to layer their evidence + argument (6)
@MrThorntonTeach has written about SPOs on his blog, and if you're interested in seeing the medium-term equivalent, check out some of the awesome work by @MrPattisonTeach (END)
