The Ultimate Writing Championship: Stage 1 - Women's Division
The Ultimate Writing Championship is a scheme of work designed to both improve pupils’ writing skills and to raise their writing engagement. There are 4 stages in this series, beginning with the very basics like writing on the line and leading up to higher level skills such as using metaphors and punctuating speech.
In each stage, there are a series of challenges. Each challenge is represented by a character who the pupil is write fighting against. These challenge fighters have names like Nikolai Onaline and Comma McGregor. It is the pupil’s goal to complete the challenge and win the contest. These challenges focus on 1 or 2 writing skills and the pupils are graded on these skills alone. For example, if the skill assessed is using varied sentence openings, they will lose the match if they use no varied sentence openings, draw if they use only 1, win on points if they use 2-3 and win by knockout if they use 4 or more. The pupils will then add their result to their challenger series record. In each stage, once the pupil has successfully completed all the challenges (or the teacher feels that they have mastered the level), they can attempt to win the Stage Title by write fighting against the stage champion. This is a writing task in which all the skills at that level are assessed and the pupil has to score a certain total of points to win the belt.
Once the pupil has won the title, you can reward them with a certificate and/or title belt and add their name to the Hall Of Fame. They can defend the title by completing the stage title match challenge again. They can now count the number of successful title defences they have had. Once they have successfully defended the Stage title many times, they have completed that stage and can move onto the next stage.
Pupils can also compete for Stage Tag Team Titles in a tag team, writing together with other pupils and/or members of staff.
The texts the pupils write are supposed to be short, except when the pupils work at the higher levels. The topic of the texts is up to the pupil or staff. They can be about anything. They could be about something to do with the lesson (including subjects other than English), or it could be left up to the pupil themselves. The fact that the pupil is assessed on only a specific skills, means that they themselves focus on that skill and improve in that area.
The U.W.C scheme can be used in literacy hour lessons, as a stand-alone lesson, or as extension work. It can be used in English lessons or in other lessons around the school, therefore promoting literacy across the curriculum. Pupils can spend some time writing about what they have learned in history for example, at the same time attempting a U.W.C challenge. It is also a good way of giving pupils the opportunity to work on their individual writing target around the school, matching their target to the appropriate challenge.
Pupils love winning titles and all pupils can win one, especially if they work in a mixed-ability tag team. Many school award pupils title belts that they are allowed to parade around the school after winning or defending a title. The U.W.C scheme raises writing engagement with pupils who normally do not enjoy writing because they do enjoy winning and therefore achieving.
The Ultimate Writing Championship scheme was predominately aimed at raising boys’ writing engagement with its links to combat sports. However, its popularity with girls means that there is now a Women’s Division of the U.W.C. We hope that more pupils and teachers benefit from the expansion of our series and enjoy write fighting.
This bundle includes all the resources for The Stage 1 Women's Division.
