Colin Mills of University College Worcester describes his study of effective teachers of writing and their successful classroom practice.

Since September 2001, I have been studying with colleagues the classroom practices of effective teachers of writing at key stages 1 and 2. These teachers, identified by local education authority advisers, literacy consultants and headteachers, worked in schools across three UK local education authorities. The study sought to identify the features of these teachers' practice that were particularly successful in raising their pupils' achievements, and the knowledge underpinning their practice.

We conducted three classroom observations with each teacher, observing cycles of planning, teaching and assessment. We also interviewed teachers and worked with them to analyse particularly effective lessons and teaching strategies. The use of role play and dramatic techniques, for example, was identified as a key strategy that has enhanced achievement (and lesson enjoyment).

Our major findings can be usefully grouped under three headings.

Giving children a clear sense of audience for their writing

In the classes of effective teachers, children know who they are writing for, and why. We observed some exciting and inspirational teaching where pupils were writing in role, writing lists or instructions, incorporating a real sense of purpose and function. Teachers gave pupils the opportunity to write about things that mattered to them. Interestingly, boys made most progress when given the time to define their audiences explicitly.

Lisa, one of our teacher partners who works in a small village infant school, told us: "I now spend a long time talking to the class about what they like to read and what they appreciate in a story. At one time, I rushed through that! But I now want them thinking right from the beginning, in reception, about the needs of their audience."

Giving pupils a clear sense of the roles of the learner and the teacher

Children and teachers need to be clear about how we go about writing in the classroom, the kind of help we give each other, and the kind of help we get from the teacher.

Lindsay, a Year 6 teacher in a multi-ethnic, challenging middle school, put it simply in an interview: "I'll spend the first few weeks in September talking about writing - how we do it and what we need to do to do it well. It's no good launching into things without them knowing the rules of talking, thinking, drafting … I talk to them about the problems I have as a writer and read them lots of extracts from autobiographies of writers and things like the pieces by writers in the Gervase Phinn collection* … when they hear someone like Anne Fine saying, 'Ideas are all around; the secret is knowing what you can do with them', it works like magic!"

Giving novice writers clear models of varied genres

We found that children's writing is helped when they are taught how writing is connected to reading, and how the textual conventions of different kinds of writing can be incorporated into their own writing.

Lindsay, mentioned above, also uses "a lot of newspapers and magazines, which are great in that they have lots of different kinds of writing". She goes on to say that she "can show, rather than tell, what the conventions are and how different they are between, say, the problem page, the football write-up, the short story and the TV review".

Jane, a Year 6 teacher, spent a long time working on group-based activities in which pupils investigated how characters were presented through dialogue, action and description in stories. A key feature of Jane's teaching was her close questioning to encourage children to grasp what effective writers actually do. Another teacher got Year 5 pupils involved in examining the advantages and disadvantages of email communication, and a reflection on the conventions and protocols of electronic communication.

The project included study days to share ideas with teacher colleagues; over 200 teachers have been involved in our work. We also prepared packs of lessons, linked to National Curriculum programmes, that have been disseminated to all schools in our local education authorities. Many of our teachers have led workshops and help sessions around the country; encouragingly, several have written up their involvement in the programme towards a higher degree. A project report, with full accounts of teachers' lessons, will be published by Open University Press in the summer of 2005.

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