Mixed-age planning is extremely helpful to the staff in our small school. Staff have all stated that their subject knowledge has improved as has their confidence. Pathways to Write has had a very positive impact on teacher workload. I would say that we wouldn’t look back! It has improved stamina for writing throughout the school and the pupils' engagement in writing has very much improved. Once we had the initial training, it was very simple to implement.
Pathways to Write – Mixed-Age Writing Programme
A writing programme for primary schools with mixed-age classes. These engaging English units develop vocabulary, reading and writing skills for each year group in a mixed-age class.
Manageable and effective for mixed-age
The units, for use with pupils from EYFS to year 6, provide clear detailed lesson plans and resources, linked to high-quality texts to ensure engaging and purposeful English lessons. Each unit of work incorporates teaching strategies designed to engage and challenge writers.
Proven methodology
Flexible and inclusive
The whole-school package includes 42 full units of work, six for each year group in a 2-year cycle. EYFS to year 6 units provide clear detailed lesson plans, teaching PowerPoints (for year 1 to year 6) and resources, and are linked to high-quality texts to ensure engaging and purposeful English lessons. Effective teaching strategies for supporting and challenging pupils of different ages within the same class are included in each unit. There is also a training video and methodology to support implementation.
Pathways to Write has the flexibility to accommodate a variety of class structures. To find out more about creating a bespoke package, please see a sample pack.
Award-winning and bespoke
A whole-school, bespoke curriculum can be created from over 80 diverse, representative and thematic texts. The full package includes fully resourced units of work, six for each year group from EYFS to year 6. Choose from two units per half-term for each year in your school’s cycle.
Further documents within the package support the effective implementation of Pathways to Write: a mixed-age methodology, an overview of year group skills from EYFS to year 6, reading and spoken language links, a document to guide the progression and tracking of skills, assessment materials, a progressive guide to genres and a document linking the texts to key curriculum themes.
Age-related skills
The Pathways texts are engaging and the children just adore them! The mixed-age planning, provided by Pathways to Write means the children, from the get-go, are fully immersed in the text. The children are ‘bothered’ and become so invested in the story and the author’s style that they hang on to every last word that is read. The echoes of ‘please read more’ are heart-warming because you know they are genuinely excited and rooting for the main character the whole time! The planning is exciting, easy to follow and helps us, as teachers, deliver high-quality lessons which allow the children to develop as masters of their writing!
Key elements of Pathways to Write
The programme allows for flexibility for your experienced teachers along with support for those less experienced and ECTs. 4 to 5 weeks of planning gives schools and teachers time to incorporate other themes and topics into the curriculum.
Choice of 6 units per mixed-age cycle
Fully resourced sessions including teaching PowerPoints (for year 1 to year 6) to ease teachers' workload
Units linked to engaging and diverse texts
Progressive development in each year of vocabulary, reading and writing skills through the mastery approach
Links creatively to the wider curriculum
Easily adaptable for needs within your mixed-age class and challenges for greater depth writers
Contributes to the development of cultural capital
Full coverage of grammar and punctuation for each year group
Training video and methodology to support implementation
Ongoing support and contact with consultants
Single year group and mixed-age year group combinations available
Clear modelled and shared writing examples
Our picks
Pathways to Write - KS2 - Set 1
£1,215.00
Pathways to Write - KS1 - Set 1
£875.00
Pathways to Write - KS2 - Set 2
£1,215.00
Pathways to Write - KS1 - Set 2
£875.00
Package pricing
Prices are subject to VAT.
For those schools who have not previously purchased a full single year group/whole-school package, only our themed Pathways to Write units are available to purchase individually, or as a themed set of 7 units.
| Package | Price |
|---|---|
| Full mixed-age package (EYFS - year 6) | £1975 |
| Year group package (+key documents) | £325 |
| KS1 package (EYFS - year 2) | £875 |
| KS2 package (year 3 - year 6) | £1215 |
Individual units
If you are an existing Pathways to Write school and wish to order any additional units, please complete the order form to access your Pathways Literacy discounted prices.
| Non-Pathways School | Pathways to Write School | Pathways Community School | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pathways to Write individual themed unit | £40 | £30 | £25 |
| Themed units package (7 units for EYFS - year 6) | £250 | £189 | £157.50 |
How does your mixed-age planning work?
Pathways to Write mixed-age works on a two year cycle. Each unit of work centres around one text that you can share and enjoy with your whole class. The writing objectives are taught through the text with plenty of opportunities to write purposeful and meaningful writing tasks. To ensure full coverage of all objectives, we produced an overview for Y1/2, Y3/4 and Y5/6.
How is the teacher supported delivering two objectives to one class?
Within each overview, we married up objectives from both year groups, for example, in year 3 using conjunctions to express time, place and cause matches well with extending the range of sentences with more than clause in year 4. Where possible, the objectives have been linked to support the teacher delivering the lesson. However, some skills do have to be taught discretely to a year group e.g. subordination in Y2 or subjunctive in Y6 and we suggest an alternative activity for the additional year group.
Do you cater for classes with more than 2 year groups?
If you have mixed classes with more than two-year groups e.g. a Y3/4/5 class, this can be facilitated with consultant support – a 3-year rolling programme can be developed. Get in touch to discuss your options jamie@theliteracycompany.co.uk
We do not want to restrict topics and themes. Is it possible to be flexible with Pathways to Write and move some mixed-age units around, or change some of them if needed?
Yes. Pathways to Write does provide a full writing curriculum but is also designed so that schools can tailor it to their own curriculums. We do provide a curriculum map to link texts and curriculum as part of the package. If texts do not match your learning links, some could be moved around to ensure close links to curriculums. We will always give advice on this if you contact us to ensure continuity of skills. The mastery keys can still be used if a school wishes to replace a text with one of their own for additional flexibility.
Does it include a range of texts and writing outcomes?
Yes. There are a range of books that drive the units including many high-quality picture books, novels, non-fiction texts and some poetry. There are a range of final writing outcomes at the end of each unit: narrative and non-fiction, but there are many shorter writing opportunities built into each unit.
For full coverage of the poetry curriculum, we have produced poetry units that link with the themes and are designed to be taught for a week at the start of each half-term prior to the units to support vocabulary development. These are available as separate add-on units to purchase. To find out more about our poetry units, click here.
The supporting texts for the units of work can be purchased at Peters at 30% off the RRP price of the books:
Please contact Oonagh Towse oonagh.towse@peters.co.uk 07815 557646*
*You will receive 30% discount off the RRP on the vast majority of books ordered for the Pathways to Read and Pathways to Write programmes. Items excluded from this offer: book packs, plus short discount items (a small number of academic titles, big books, and audio titles). This offer may not be used in conjunction with any other promotion
Is there any guidance for modelled or shared writing during the unit? Is there an expectation that teachers model writing during the lessons?
There are an extensive amount of resources and modelled/shared writing lessons provided within the lessons to draw upon.
Are there training packages available if we wanted someone to come into school and support us with any aspects of writing?
Yes, there is an online training video included with your purchase or we can deliver staff meetings or inset. For details of these, please contact us.
Please note training is not essential to run the programme, although some schools have found an initial training session to be beneficial for staff.
