Writing

WRITING

Intent – What are we trying to achieve?

At Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School and Nursery, we endeavour to create a love for writing.

We want every child to leave Year 6 with the skills of an excellent writer who:

· has the ability to write with fluency;

· has an extensive bank of vocabulary and an knowledge of writing techniques to extend details or description;

· can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures;

· displays good transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated, spelled correctly and neat;

· can think about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and knows how they will achieve this;

· re-reads, edits and improves their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability.

We understand that writing is complex and is made up of many skills and that each of these skills requires specific teaching. The link between speaking and writing is a strong element of our practice and we know that ‘if children can’t speak it, they can’t write it’. Spoken language and oracy is prioritised in our writing curriculum in order to build vocabulary for all learners and prepare our children with the tools they need in order to be successful in their writing. Words are powerful - using the right words makes for better communication and effect. Vocabulary and the use of language are taught explicitly within and across the writing process and are also unpicked in its daily use in the classroom.

Our school also strongly believes in the importance of teaching children not only to have the skills to write, but to enjoy and feel motivated to write too. We try to make writing ‘real’ and purposeful for the children through exciting hooks and interesting writing opportunities and activities, which often link to cross-curricular topic or high-quality text. Through this approach, we intend for children to develop a love of writing that they will carry with them throughout their school life and beyond.

Implementation – How is our vision translated into practice?

We ensure each unit of writing is carefully and effectively planned for, responsive to learners’ needs and interests, incorporates all the key elements needed to be a successful writer, as well as ensuring coverage of National Curriculum expectations and the progression of skills.

To ensure we have an agreed whole-school approach to the teaching of writing, we use the teaching sequence as outlined in the diagram below. This provides a coherent model for linking and combining language and literacy knowledge into effective teaching and learning opportunities. This leads to meaningful and high-quality written outcomes, with each phase in a teaching sequence informing and leading into the next.

Each unit of writing starts with a ‘hook’ - something exciting that will engage the children with the subject matter. The hook is intended to excite children into the topic, make them want to find out more! Through the hook, the purpose and audience for the writing task is also established. Where possible, the context for writing is carefully chosen to match and align with the wider curriculum and year group’s topics.

Children will then be immersed in creative activities and discussion to develop their background knowledge and ideas for writing, grammatical knowledge and vocabulary aligned to the text. ‘Speaking and Listening’ activities are crucial to developing children’s vocabulary and interaction with the subject matter. These will include drama, debates, storytelling and research, and will be a regular feature from the beginning, and across, a writing unit.

A model text is used to expose pupils to the text type: all English writing units stem from a well-structured and high-quality WAGOLL (what a good one looks like), which allows children to experience an example of the language and overall organisational features associated with the chosen text type. The model text is used to provide a stimulus for in-depth discussions around the underlying patterns of the text type, and how the writer creates different effects focussing heavily on sentence structures and vocabulary.

Children are taught to plan their writing and we use a variety of planning writing templates across the school. This may be informal in Key Stage 1 (through story maps, drawings, etc.), moving on to more formal planning templates as they move through Key Stage 2.

Teachers model the planning, writing and editing process, maintaining a clear focus on key objective(s). Teachers think the writing process through aloud, rehearsing sentences before writing, re-reading and editing constantly, making changes to sentence-construction or word choice and explaining why one form or word is preferable to another. Children also make contributions based on initial modelling, with contributions and their merits being discussed and refined. The shared writing session primarily focuses on how to achieve a given objective(s) within the writing to be completed. It also provides a vehicle for the teaching of grammar. Children then have the opportunity to practise and extend their own writing. Opportunities are provided for practise until most children have mastered the objective and can apply it when they write.

In independent writing sessions, the children create their own piece of writing, sharing their writing with a partner and exploring suggestions for improvements. As the children write, they continue to orally rehearse, making changes where necessary. During this time, children are expected to edit their work carefully, considering their teacher’s feedback and the effect their word choice has on the reader. Finally, the children write the text-type independently and apply what they have learnt across the curriculum. Children are encouraged to edit for publishing. The unit ends with a writing outcome that is assessed by the teacher. Where possible, feedback is completed within the lesson, unless children have completed a key writing piece when a ‘deep mark’ is completed. All feedback is given in line with our marking and feedback policy. Children should be clear on what they can do well and what they need to improve within their writing.

High quality working walls are used during lessons to enhance learning and for children to refer to. Working walls display an array of teacher modelled writing, the shared writing with children and children’s published work providing good quality scaffolds for all abilities.

Spelling:

In addition to the teaching of spelling within the teaching sequence and the focus on the development of high quality synthetic phonics, a whole-school approach to the teaching of spelling has been developed. Spelling is taught according to the rules and words contained in Appendix 1 of the English National Curriculum. Children are given spellings to learn each week and are given a spelling test the following week.

Grammar and Punctuation:

Grammar and punctuation knowledge are taught primarily through English lessons. Teachers plan to teach the required knowledge through the genres of writing that they are teaching, linking it to the genre to make it more connected with the intended writing outcome. Teachers sometimes focus on particular grammar and punctuation knowledge as stand-alone lessons, particularly when focussing on identification of specific elements.

Assessment:

We use a range of strategies to assess the children’s writing and employ effective formative and summative assessment procedures at the beginning, during and at the end of a unit of work. Before a unit of work begins, class teachers consider and establish the skills pupils already have to apply within a particular text type or genre and this information is then used to inform the planning of the unit of work. The unit ends with a writing outcome and assessed to evaluate the knowledge pupils have developed and acquired and the progress they have made.

Teachers and leaders work together to jointly standardise and moderate the children’s writing. Summative assessments for writing are then submitted to the senior leaders at the end of each term. Writing assessment grids have been developed for the following year groups: Y1, 3, 4 and 5. Teachers refer to these alongside the standard Teacher Assessment Frameworks (TAFs) for Year 2 and 6 as a support for making judgements and to inform planning. Teachers will use their professional judgement to determine whether a child is working within age-related expectations, above or below. They base their judgements on the quality of the writing that children produce across a collection of writing.

Children who are identified as not achieving age-related outcomes and/or those on the SEND register may be assessed against the outcomes for the year group below. Interventions/support may be put in place in order to accelerate writing skills in this case. The nature of the intervention will be decided by the teacher and the SENCo. Support in class may include small group work with an adult during lessons to model key skills, scaffolds created by the teacher to assist with completion of work and word banks/sentence openers provided to assist the child when writing.

Early Years

Our aim by the end of Reception is for children to have achieved the Early Learning Goals (ELG) for all areas of literacy. In order to achieve the ELG in Writing, children need to be able to:

• Write recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed

• Spell words by identifying sounds in them and representing the sounds with a letter or letters

• Write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.

In order to help children achieve their potential and achieve the ELG in Writing, we provide a literacy-rich environment with plenty of opportunities for independent, child-initiated writing, as well as quality-first, focus writing groups. Writing resources, such as paper, pens, chalk, paint etc. are readily available for children to access independently across the whole learning-environment in the Early Years. We plan our lessons based on a different book of the week across the Early Years.

In Nursery, children are first taught how to hold and use a pencil to mark-make and are encouraged to give meaning to the marks they make, as well as noticing print in the environment. Children also work on name writing and motor skill development.

In Reception, we plan for a weekly focus for Writing, which involves small group or one-to-one work with an adult. We plan differentiated writing tasks and offer different levels of support and visual-aids based on the child’s needs. In addition to this, we run regular interventions to support children who are working below age-related expectations, as well as extension Writing groups for our more-able children. We teach daily phonics lessons following the Read Write Inc. Phonics scheme.

Impact – What is the impact of our curriculum?

We aim to meet the expectations of the Early Learning Goals and the National Curriculum and when possible, exceed these and ensure that children make good progress in Writing during their time at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School and Nursery.

By the time the children reach the end of our writing curriculum in Year 6, the impact is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience. They will have developed a writer’s craft, enjoy sustained writing and can manipulate language, grammar and punctuation to create effect.

We are ambitious for all our children and strive to ensure that we provide all children with the skills needed for them to become successful writers, no matter what their starting point, background or additional needs.