Resource for Writing

I have now begun reading 'Breathe' to my class and they're loving it. The bookmarks I have made are allowing the children to focus on the narrative as well as exploring where the characters are going and driving forward the important elements of the story. We have working on setting up our own spooky reading corner - but more about that in another post. The next item that I have been working on and have completed today has been my 'Breathe' VCOP board.

The VCOP (Vocabulary, Connectives, Openings and Punctuation) system was something that I stumbled over a few years ago on another teacher's blog-site. I found that is was designed by Ros Wilson. Ros has been involved in Education for over forty years and always comes across as extremely passionate about raising standards in writing. The VCOP board is a very basic, clear and clever way for pupils and teachers to gain a greater understanding of the skills required to become a successful writer (albeit in concern with National Levels). Sites like Sparklebox have taken Ros' idea and created visual and exciting '3D pyramid' which children have on their desks as an aid.

The VCOP pyramid is a guide to improving the standard of writing but should never be seen as the sole resource for doing so.

When I first printed out and put together the Sparklebox version of the VCOP board I found that I liked the idea but thought the size of the pyramid too large for a child's desk. Instead, I created my own VCOP mat (this has been done before!). I felt that the mat was more practical; easy to store away at the end of a lesson and functioned far better as a clutterless tool that the children could engage with.

Being Literacy Coordinator, I took it upon myself to create a bank of differentiated VCOP boards for every year group in my school. The boards would be tailored to the levels of ability throughout that year-group and the images and designs on the board would be relevant to the topic work covered: E.g. The Year 5 (who study the Victorians) board had images of Queen Victoria handing out advice.

I have also made my VCOP boards double-sided: it seemed a shame to create a lovely resource and laminate it for consistent use but not use both sides. On the ones that I have made, I have placed word guides and grammatical explanations. Lower down the school, the board (on its flip slide) explains the basic function of a verb and a noun. Further up the school it explores figurative language devices such as similes and onomatopoeia.

With my 'Breathe' board, I decided to embed the 'Tips for how to write a good Ghost Story' guide that I had written (so that the child is consistently familiar with it) and I also found some good examples of similes and short sentences from the novel.


Of course, I'm not going to know how effective the board is until I have the kids using them. And before I get them using the boards, I need to make sure that they have developed a real thirst for writing their own ghost story. It goes without saying that I don't see the VCOP board as a way of easing the teaching of writing in any way - I see it as a useful tool which could help focus and assist a pupil. More on the VCOP board shall be added in future blog entries.

Both the PDF and Publisher version of my Breathe Board are available in the Resources section of the blog. I have attached the Publisher version in case anyone wishes to amend my work.