Each term Early Years practitioners from all three junior schools and other international schools across the Netherlands meet to share best practice.
Today it was Junior School Diamanthorst’s turn to host the Early Years Writing Forum and chose to focus on a new process they have been trialling to support writing in Early Years.
After having a tour of the campus’ Foundation Stage classrooms, representatives from the International School in the Hague, The Lighthouse, International School of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Community International School and European School in the Hague heard how Talk for Writing, a strategy and systematic approach to developing language acquisition, was making huge impacts on writing ability at JSD.
Talk for Writing introduces children to stories before encountering the actual book and written word, which particularly for children with English as an Additional Language find easier to grasp and accelerates their learning.
It requires the teacher to learn the story without referring to the book and develop actions which the children love to imitate and ultimately suggest some of their own. So comfortable are they with the story they soon know it off by heart.
To understand how this worked in practice our Early Years delegates all had a go at retelling Dear Zoo, with actions!
The process and its effectiveness was immediately clear. One teacher exclaimed, “Why have we not done this before!”.
View the Flickr album here.
.png&command_2=resize&height_2=85 "Koningsdag at the British School in the Netherlands")
