CARDS, connectives and key terms are helping children at one Mid Devon primary school improve their writing.

Uplowman Primary School has used its ‘Big Write’ project for almost a year now after an OFSTED inspection in October, 2012, suggested giving more opp-ortunities to children to take part in sustained writing, and as a mechanism for improving wri-ting throughout the school.

Head teacher Steven Badcott says the project has been a huge success and the results have been very evident.

He said: “It isn’t a new initiative – plenty of schools have done it for a while, but we felt it was something that would support our aims to improve writing.

“Children have a Big Write book in which they complete these special pieces of work.

“Teaching of writing takes place throughout the week, but a really sharp focus happens on Friday – Big Write day – when focused teaching takes place in the first session based around VCOP – vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation.

“Children then write for the second session, and we aim to provide as interesting stimuli as possible for them to base their writing around, such as film, objects and interesting images.

“The children have responded well, especially our young emer-ging writers, and we’ve seen some rapid progress among the children.”