Writing
Our teaching of writing aims to enable children to enjoy using language in different contexts and have the confidence and ability to do so. We strive to encourage our pupils to become independent, enthusiastic and lifelong writers who can communicate their own ideas and emotions well.
The intention of our writing curriculum is to embed a consistent and sequenced approach which immerses pupils in language and literature. Our avid readers and future authors read carefully selected Vehicle texts and a plethora of other quality reading materials with gusto and they craft their writing based on texts, experiences, knowledge and aspirational models. Progress is driven by high expectations and a passion for always producing high quality, creative outcomes. Our writing scheme, Read to Write by Literacy Counts, ensures that children are given the opportunity to write in order to persuade, to inform and to entertain. This consistent approach ensures that children are highly competent writers by the end of KS2. Our text-led approach to writing also allows us to prioritise reading for pleasure, and this alongside our structured phonics programme and discrete reading lessons, means that reading permeates every stage of our writing curriculum and indeed beyond.
Ready Steady Write empowers our teachers to provide high-quality teaching of writing through high-quality literature. These detailed units of work centre on engaging, vocabulary-rich texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum. They provide:
- Clear sequential Episodes of Learning
- Vocabulary learning and contextualised spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Wider reading for the wider curriculum
- Example Texts linked to writing outcomes
- A wealth of supporting resource
Our English curriculum is developed around a sequence of high quality age-appropriate texts, using Literacy Count’s Ready Steady Write units of learning. We use each book to create opportunities to:
- develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum, through sentence accuracy sessions;
- explore the Writing structure and features of different genres, identifying the purpose and audience;
- plan and write an initial piece of Writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of Writing by editing and redrafting.
Building on this foundation, we teach literacy using a range of strategies which include:
- Group Discussion – Children discuss and interrogate new ideas in a small group or whole class setting. They listen to and value each other’s ideas whilst taking on board feedback so as to improve their own explanations.
- Partner Talk – Children work in partners to discuss their ideas. They are able to explain their ideas about texts they have read and prepare their ideas before they write.
- Questioning – Teachers use a range of questioning strategies to establish children’s current understanding and develop their learning.
- Modelled Writing – Teachers model Writing and editing to demonstrate the high expectations they have. They verbally ‘think aloud’ in order to make the Writing process explicit and provide a rich and varied vocabulary for the children to utilise in their own work. This happens daily, through sentence accuracy
- Shared Writing – Teachers use the ideas from the children to create shared pieces of Writing. This enables the children to see the Writing process in action as well as having pride and ownership over the finished piece.
- Editing – All children are signposted to regular opportunities for reviewing and editing their own and the work of others.
- Working walls – Teachers and children regularly update working walls to ensure learning is documented within a unit of work.
Class teachers ensure that the Writing process is clearly evident on working walls, with modelled examples being available to all pupils as the sequence of lessons develops.