Before I teach a unit of work in Literacy, I like the children to complete a pre-unit independent write to see what their knowledge is of the specified genre/unit. As I was about to teach script writing, I wanted to see what they actually knew about the key features so used the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert ‘Mog’s Christmas Calamity’ to inspire their writing.

I wish I had recorded them watching the video as the amount of laughter that came from watching this one clip was unbelievable and put a huge smile on my face (and theirs!) for the rest of the day!

We had a group discussion and then used talk partners to help the children develop their ideas about the written piece but that was it. Off they went to write independently!

They were all really eager to complete this and their final pieces really helped me get a thorough insight into their individual understanding of scripts.

Each independent piece is then marked against a differentiated set of key features, which then creates 2 individual genre specific targets for that particular unit.

How very festive!