Professional Development Meeting (PDM) or writing curricular targets: Developing a writing curricular target using the Primary Framework

Date of issue: Jan. 2007
Theme: Target setting

An example case study

Context

A network of schools have already established effective pupil tracking systems to identify underperforming children and target them to ensure they make the necessary accelerated progress towards and beyond age-related expectations in writing.

To support the class teachers to achieve this, they have previously developed whole-school layered curricular targets for sentence construction and text organisation which has had an impact on the standard of writing across each of the participating schools.

From their further analysis of the writing across the network, the schools now want to build on these successes and further develop the children’s repertoire of vocabulary and language skills to engage the reader, focusing on using speaking and listening and cross-curricular links as a key strategy to improve writing. They want to do this through developing the use of layered curricular target setting and the opportunity presented by the Primary Framework Continuing Professional Development.

The schools propose to use their whole-staff professional development meetings, as part of the implementation of the Primary Framework, to engage all colleagues in developing their own layered curricular targets. They want to look at the progression within a strand and then link this to developing the pedagogy through speaking and listening, linked to the planning sequence promoted in the Primary Framework.