Writing
Writing
INTENT
The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for pleasure. In addition to this, our English curriculum aims to encourage all children to write and read with enthusiasm. Children have access to diverse, high-quality texts to support understanding and learning. Reading and writing are embedded within the broader curriculum.
IMPLEMENTATION
At the start of Year 1, the emphasis is on application of phonics – matching known phonemes to graphemes – first in words, then dictated phrases/captions and sentences. Oral re-telling of firsthand experience and familiar narratives is vital to further develop our children’s oracy and vocabulary. Children begin to make the transition from oral to independent, written composition of a series of sentences relating to a range of exciting writing stimuli.
From the end of Year 1 to Year 6, we use the principles of ‘The Write Stuff’, by Jane Considine, to ensure a whole school approach to the mechanics of writing. Texts for narrative units are carefully chosen to inspire children’s writing and to enable them to acquire a rich and varied vocabulary.
The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons.
As part of the teaching sequence, teachers plan experience days, sentence stacking lessons and independent writing sequences. Experience days immerse children in experiences linked to their writing and immerse them in vocabulary linked to the lenses in ‘The Writing Rainbow’. From the experience days, children take part in the sentence stacking lessons. Sentence stacking lessons focus on writing approximately three sentences using the different lenses from the rainbow.
‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning, broken into ‘learning chunks’, that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.
An individual lesson is based on one plot point from the text, broken into three learning chunks:
1. Initiate – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
2. Model – the teacher models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
3. Enable – the children write their sentence, following the teacher’s model.
During the Initiate section children’s ideas are stimulated by resources, such as pictures, music and drama. The children are encouraged to use ‘kind calling out’ where they call out examples of vocabulary, adverbs, onomatopoeia etc.
During the Model section the teacher prepares children for writing by modelling the ideas with grammar and techniques of writing taken from the writing rainbow. (See above)
In the Enable section pupils write their own sentences, taking the opportunity to deepen the moment. ‘Deepen the Moment’ is where children are challenged to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.
This part of the unit is heavily scaffolded with lots of teacher input and modelling of authorial technique, vocabulary use and choice, sentence construction and use of grammar with reference to the 3 writing lenses:
FANTASTICS which summarise the ideas that inspire writing, GRAMMARISTICS which encourage understanding of accurate structure, and BOOMTASTICS which encourage children to use a variety of stylistic devices.
The ‘Sentence Stacking’ element of The Write Stuff is used to teach different non-narrative text types; wherever possible, this learning is applied to independent writing relating to a topic in another area of the curriculum, in order to give context to the writing and to reinforce subject knowledge.
Following the sentence stacking, children are given the opportunity to show what they have learnt by planning and writing their own independent piece of writing. Children are carefully supported through the planning process in preparation for their own independent writing relating to the original guided writing.
After they have written their independent piece, children are encouraged to proofread and edit their work, using purple polishing pens. Teachers will then mark pupils’ independent writing against year group expectations and marking ladders showing genre-specific success criteria and provide further opportunities for children to edit their work.
Teachers use Working Walls to record essential learning which the children can then use in their work. The RAFT (Reason, Audience, Features and Tone) of a piece of writing are made explicit to pupils during the writing process. Children are taught to distinguish between formal and informal language and to recognise Standard English for writing (which may differ from children’s speech).
Punctuation is taught in context through the teacher model.
Where necessary, grammar and punctuation are also taught explicitly before being applied in a sentence stacking lesson.
From as early as Year 1, children are encouraged to re-read and check their own writing, with regular proofreading and editing, using ‘purple polishing pens’, being introduced from Year 2.
Our marking and feedback policy enables consistency of approach across the school.
SPELLING, HANDWRITING AND VOCABULARY
Spelling is taught both explicitly and in context according to the National Curriculum expectations. We currently use the Nelson spelling programme to teach spelling strategies and conventions throughout Key Stage 2 but are planning to change to a more exciting scheme of work that employs a range of strategies such as syllabification, application of phonics and etymology to support children in learning how to spell accurately.
We also follow the interactive Nelson Handwriting scheme to introduce accurate letter formation and orientation and, from Year 2, to introduce joins. This scheme groups letters according to how they join. Words from the Year 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 spelling lists are often incorporated into handwriting practice. The children’s exercise books for different subjects have a feint line in between the main lines of each page, to guide letter size and orientation.
Working walls are used to promote ambitious vocabulary for each year group – these ‘Wow Words’ may be selected by the children from high quality texts and we encourage pupils to use these both orally and in their own writing.
In line Ofsted’s review findings, we place emphasis on early development of transcription, in order to decrease pupils’ cognitive overload as they progress through the school, to enable them to write with fluency, creativity and enthusiasm. We begin each school year setting high expectations for presentation of written work and editing for accuracy and improvement.
IMPACT
The impact of the writing curriculum at The Icknield Primary School will be seen through:
• Our children’s enjoyment of writing
• The quality of writing within the children’s books, across all areas of the curriculum
• Our children’s ability to write for a range of purposes, across a range of genres, both fiction and non-fiction based
• Our children’s ability to select and use vocabulary to excite, inform or entertain the reader
• Our children’s understanding and use of a range of punctuation, knowing the effect it can have on the reader in both writing and reading.
• Our children’s understanding and use of the various sentence types that can be used to support different genres.
• Our children’s ability to use phonetic knowledge and spelling rules to spell words accurately
• Our children’s ability to speak clearly, fluently and coherently; to be able to listen attentively with understanding, pleasure and empathy and contribute to group discussions effectively.
• The percentage of children working at Expected level or greater across the school
• The percentage of children working at Expected level or greater at the end of Year 2 and Year 6, when compared to local and national outcomes