Scaffolding Foundational Writing Skills in KS2

A workshop for TAs to explore how to support KS2 pupils with key writing skills.

The recent Ofsted guidance, Telling the story: the English education subject report and Strong foundations in the first years of school, recommend that we teach foundational writing skills – spelling, handwriting and sentence construction – explicitly throughout the school and provide sufficient practice for pupils to become confident, so as to minimise reliance on scaffolds and editing when writing.

In many cases, Teaching Assistants are involved in supporting groups and individual pupils to develop these skills and apply them to their written work.

This course is designed specially to provide TAs with an understanding of the KS2 writing curriculum and its associated subject knowledge, as well as an opportunity to explore strategies and approaches for scaffolding pupils’ foundational writing skills to develop independence and confidence.

Participants will:

• understand the KS2 writing expectations;
• consider recent guidance for the teaching of key writing skills; and
• explore strategies and approaches to support children in developing writing skills towards automaticity and fluency.

Suitable for TAs, HLTAs and English Subject Leaders supporting TAs in the primary phase.

TAs working with KS2 pupils who still need to embed their learning of KS1 writing skills may find the Scaffolding Writing in KS1 workshop helpful on 13 Feb ’25.

About the facilitator | Susie Spolander

With over 25 years in education, Susie is an experienced teacher, leader and English consultant, working with schools and organisations both nationally and internationally. Drawing on her comprehensive understanding of curriculum, assessment, and effective teaching methodologies, she guides school leaders, teachers support staff and governors in developing their strategy and practice to improve pupil outcomes. Having served in a variety of educational roles, including as a Local Authority School Improvement Consultant, Susie specialises in designing and delivering tailored training programmes and projects to address educational priorities, working with individual schools, academies, trusts and partnerships, as well as collaborating with institutions such as Oxford University Press, BlueSky Learning and Edge Hill University.

Susie is passionate about inspiring teachers and engaging learners. Her face-to-face and online training is of high quality: rooted in the curriculum and providing evidence-based practice coupled with creative teaching and learning approaches. She believes in a bespoke approach to school support, working alongside school leaders, class teachers and support staff to develop practice through a range of leadership and classroom-based strategies, always precisely tailored to the identified needs of the school.

As an English Consultant for the OUP Professional Development team, Susie leads training, consults on product development, and collaborates with teams as a contributor to educational projects and publications.

Accessing the online event

Following registration for this event you will receive an email from Eventbrite confirming your place. If you do not receive the email within a few minutes, please check your junk or spam folders and check that the correct email address was provided at the time of booking. If you did not create an account at the time of booking or someone else booked on your behalf, you will need to create an Eventbrite account. Open your booking confirmation email, select ‘Claim Your Order’ and then choose a password. Make a note of your email address that was used to make the booking and your new password – you will need these to access the Eventbrite page containing the link to the event.

A minimum of 48 hours before the event begins you will receive another email from Eventbrite containing a direct link to the event and to the Eventbrite Online Event page. Login to Eventbrite, using the same email and password you used to create your account. You will now have access to the online event link and any pre-event materials. This link must not be shared with other people.

Please test the link the day before the event to make sure you can connect. If you need help please email info@otsa.org.uk or call 01865 647999 in good time before the event begins. We will be unable to help during the event itself. Please note, if you unsubscribe from Eventbrite before the event takes place you will not receive any further emails from Eventbrite and therefore will not receive the email with the link to the event.

We do not provide refunds if you are unable to access the event due to technical issues that are beyond our control.

Participation in online events

In all cases, at the beginning of the session to confirm your identity please ensure that your camera is on, your username matches the name you registered with and that you register in ‘chat’ with your first name, second name and organisation. This is for security and registration purposes and we may remove, without refunds, participants who have not confirmed their identity as described above.

Our online events aim to be interactive and at times you may be expected to have your camera and microphone on during the session, although usually your microphone should be muted.

We may use ‘Raised Hands’, ‘Reactions’, ‘Chat’, ‘Polls’, shared whiteboards and shared screens during the session. We may also use ‘Breakout Rooms’ to allow you to work in a smaller group.

This event will not be recorded for copyright and privacy reasons.

Refunds

No refunds will be given with less than 30 days notice.

In the event of a refund request, please note that the Eventbrite booking fee of 6.95% plus 0.59p per ticket is not refundable.

To keep our event fees as low as possible, we are not able to issue invoices for payment by cheque or bank transfer and we are not able to reserve places without payment.

We strongly recommend that you take out ‘event ticket insurance’ which may cover the cost of your fee should you be unable to attend the event.

Technical difficulties

Should an online session encounter any technical difficulties we will do our best to continue with the session; this may be on a different online platform. In the event that we are unable to do this we will rearrange the session. If you are unable to attend the new date a full refund will be given.