Strategies/resources used in Year 2 planning Literary unit The Lost Stars
Peer and Self-Assessment
Peer and self-assessment, where students assess each other and themselves, can encourage students to take greater responsibility for their
learning, for example, by encouraging engagement with assessment criteria and reflection of their own performance and that of their peers.
Hot Seating
A child (or adult) sits in the “hot seat” and assumes the role of a character. Other children ask questions.
Role on the Wall
Draw the outline of a person (you can draw around a child if you wish). Write information about the character in and around the outline – what do
we know about the character’s appearance, personality, likes, dislikes? What questions would we like to ask him / her? What do others think / say
about the character?
Freeze Framing
Groups, pairs or individuals form a frozen image that depicts something they have read or their response to this. When they are tapped on their
shoulder or the teacher walks by them they voice aloud what they think the character would say if they were in the scene.
Venn (reading response activity)
A reading response activity – learners use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast a text or aspects of a text e.g. characters, settings etc.
Story Mapping
Pupils first plot the pictures from a well-rehearsed story onto a curved line running either from the top to the bottom of a page or across the page
and practise retelling the story as they point to the pictures in sequence. Actions are used throughout the retelling of the story to reinforce and
embed the sequence. Once pupils become confident and familiar with the story they can retell it in writing in their own words. The next part of the
strategy is to ‘innovate’ the story by changing the characters, their actions and maybe the setting etc to create their own story.
Pie Corbett Actions
In his “Talk for Writing” approach, Pie Corbett advocates using actions for key words related to the genre of writing. Images and videos
demonstrating the actions can be found online.
Planning Skeletons
Devised by Sue Palmer, these are graphic organisers to support planning for writing in different genres and forms. They are also very useful when
analysing the structure of model texts. Many schools have a selection of these in big book format and they are also available on CD-Rom. See
online for further information.
Two Stars and a Wish
A marking strategy used by teachers and pupils. Two simple stars and a ‘wand’ are used to indicate two things that are good (the stars) and one
suggestion for improvement next time (the wish).
Source Square (also known as a Reasoning Rectangle)
A way of encouraging close observation of an image or section of text. Develops inferential understanding. Place the image or text in the centre.
Record observations, thoughts and ideas in boxes surrounding it.
Modelled and shared writing
“…a strategy that slows down the writing process and demonstrates and models for learners the way a writer needs to think. It comes after initial decisions
have been made about the topic of the writing. It can be done in one of two ways: initially, through teacher demonstration, and subsequently with teacher as
scribe writing down suggestions from the class, once they have become familiar with the process. For class use, the two processes should be used
separately, especially with young learners or those with less secure literacy skills who will have a particular need for the demonstration element.” From
Guidance on the Teaching of Writing Skills (WG 2010)