Ros Wilson’s VCOP
Neil Bowker
Neil.bowker@dulwich-shanghai.cn
Year Two Teacher
What is VCOP?
VCOP is a teaching and learning process that
rapidly raises standards in children's writing
through fast, fun, lively teaching activities.
What is VCOP?
4 generic targets:
Vocabulary
Connectives
Openers
Punctuation
How do you hook the children’s interest?
“The evil Sergeant Sabotage is
out to destroy the world;
removing all punctuation to
wreak chaos in our language.
He takes every colourful and
exciting word from our
sentences, sending all the school
children across the world into a
bored stupor, so he can take
over the world.”
And these are our four superheroes!
What’s the hook?
To capture the students’ interest the four
superheroes have been developed. The idea is
that they help fight Sergeant Sabotage by
making sentences more interesting and accurate.
Violet Vocabulary
Violet Vocabulary’s aim is to
improve the children’s ability to
use interesting word choices. She
is more commonly known as
Wow Woman.
Activity Time!
Vocabulary
Using the whiteboards in the middle of the table,
write as many words to describe the character in
the picture on the next slide...
Vocabulary
green
Popcorn!
When you want the children to
give you one word answers
quickly, such as adjectives, shout
popcorn and the children will
continuously give you words to
write on the whiteboard. This is
great for brainstorming and saves
time.
WARNING- this takes practise
and clear rules!
Captain Connective
The Captain holds the team together
and without him writing can be
repetitive and boring holding no
power over the reader at all
His greatest power is to link ideas
together providing a net to catch the
reader.
Connectives
The use of connectives help the children join
sentences together and make their writing more
detailed and interesting.
meanwhile
and
but
so
despite
because
if
although
Even though
whic
h
however
also
then
Let’s play bingo!
Draw a 2X2 grid on your whiteboards
Write down four connectives…
Fantastic Opener
He jumps up and tells the
reader when something is
happening. It’s his job to
hook the reader in and
keep him reading.
Teaching time connectives
using Fantastic Opener is
very effective.
Openers
Activity 2
Face a partner. Think of as many time connective
words as you can.
Then
Doctor Punctuation
If capital letters and full stops are
missing, or in the wrong place writing,
is weak. It will not have the power to
grab a reader.
He reveals what characters actually
say with speech marks.
He helps make work flow and make
sense to the reader.
Punctuation
Musical Punctuation
Grab some instruments and give them out to the
children. When the children feel that
punctuation should be punctuation, they make a
sound with the instrument.
Kung Fu Punctuation
Share a story on the IWB. The children use Kung
Fu Panda to show what punctuation should be
in the gap.
When to use VCOP…
Participating in quick, regular activities helps the
children build up a bank of knowledge and
makes them more likely to use it in their writing.
Rainbow Writing- self and peer assessment
You can use the four different colours of the
superheroes to underline where the children
have used them in their writing. This is helpful
to pick out what they have done well and to
create targets for future writing.
When to use VCOP…
• Morning activities
• Carousel of skills activities
• Mental/oral starters
• Success Criteria
• Editing writing
• Self and peer assessment
Let’s look at some examples…