Talk for Writing in the Early Years: How to Teach Story and Rhyme, Involving Families 2-5 (Revised Edition)

Part 1: Developing the Talk-for-Writing Approach

1 The centrality of story and the origins of Talk for Writing

2 Aladdin’s Cave: The ‘Talk for Writing and Learning’ classroom

3 Telling your first story

4 Imitation: Creating the bank of story ideas

5 Imitation: Helping the children become storytellers

6 Innovation

7 Invention: Moving from imitation to independent invention

8 Invention: Ideas for inventions and the movement from telling to writing

Part 2: Involving Families

9 Why involving parents matters

10 The storytelling process as the key to family involvement

Appendix 1: Sentence, spelling and story games

Appendix 2: The early years story bank

Appendix 3: A dozen picture books ideal for retelling

Pie Corbett’s ground-breaking Talk for Writing approach has been successfully used by thousands of schools to teach writing creatively in an engaging way that motivates children.



Now Pie and Julia take this multi-sensory approach to Early Years settings introducing a simple way to inspire young children’s language development through storytelling.



Children learn language through memorable, meaningful repetition. The Talk for Writing approach enables children to internalise the language of story so that they can imitate it, innovate on it and create their own effective stories independently. Talk for Writing in the Early Years will show you how to put rhyme and story at the heart of your work with children and parents so that young learners language development and creativity flourishes.


This multimedia resource shows you how to:
• Select a story or rhyme the children will enjoy and tell it engagingly, encouraging the children to join in
• Use a story map so they can picture what happens 
• Use actions to reinforce meaning and emphasise key language patterns
• Help children build a bank of tales, developing their linguistic repertoire 

The 2 OLCs contain:

1 Footage of Pie Corbett conferences with EY teachers showing Talk for Writing in action

2 Clips of nursery children engaged in the Talk for Writing approach

3 Advice on how to use the OLC and handouts to train all staff in the approach

4 Interviews with parents and nursery school teachers on the impact of Talk for Writing

5 21 stories with story maps