Do read the whole post!Why so many genres? I know many of my ex-Year 1 colleagues were frustrated by all of this and so was I both in Year 2 and in later years, when children came to me with neither a secure grasp of the sentence structure or the features!
I would love to see a set of teachers from EYFS, primary, secondary and sixth form sit down and come up with a better plan for genres as I do believe focusing on them and their features robs us of precious time. Which genres are essential and need to be embedded, and when? Broad and balanced can and does mean different things in different year groups already. If children were focusing on maximum of say 5 genres in Year 1 but really embedding them, then they could move to Year 2 secure and ready for a new challenge. Teachers could interleave and embed the previous year(s) genres and build on them.
If we are to get it right for the poorest children, we need to stop wasting their time flitting around genres, give them the opportunities to speak and increasingly write in sentences and really secure these right from the start. The ability to articulate orally and in writing is vital if children are to succeed and cannot be left to chance.
I replied...
I totally agree and speak constantly about the need for infant teachers to spend more time on foundational literacy skills – including vocabulary and language comprehension.
Little children should be encouraged to write far more freely about their experiences and their ideas in the context of teaching and expecting correct letter formation, applying phonics to spelling and aiming for correct spelling by constantly ‘helping’ the children, and supporting with correct sentence formation and punctuation.
‘Genre’ can be introduced through literature with some introduction to some genre-writing – but not the kind of slavish genre structures that have featured in Key Stage One for many years.
Worse still, the expectation that genre writing is part of national assessment has skewed the time spent on genre writing at the expense of language development and the ‘basics for literacy’ including, for example, sentence structure.
Furthermore, mini whiteboards should be assigned to the dustbin or perhaps to create some kind of playground sculpture. They are doing untold damage to high-quality phonics provision and handwriting. We need to use the most fit-for-purpose resources and practices for literacy which would be paper-based material. The country is full of children, and even teachers, who cannot hold a writing implement and write well.