Writing

Writing Statement of Intent

At St Paul’s, we want all children to be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing and reach their full potential.

Our aims are to:

Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers.

Provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and enhance all pupils.

Ensure all children to acquire a wide vocabulary and to be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.

Ensure all children to have a solid understanding of grammar and apply it effectively to their writing.

Ensure children to be able to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

Encourage all children to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, joined, individual handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school.

Ensure that all children have a good knowledge of phonics to springboard children to becoming fluent writers.

Plan a progressive curriculum to build upon previous teaching, with regular assessment through internal and external moderation to ensure each child’s needs are met to reach their full potential.

Writing Implementation

At St Paul’s English units are planned using an engaging ‘Book’ and a ‘Hook’. This serves to engage and create interest amongst the children.

For example:

EYFS – Theme of Winter and Jack Frost / Hook is a book found in a block of ice

KS1 – ‘Disgusting Sandwich’ / Hook is a disgusting sandwich found at school; ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ / Hook is a trail of seeds, golden eggs, and giant footprints

LKS2 – ‘Scarabs Secret’ / Hook is mysterious hieroglyphics and a scarab beetle discovered at school; ‘Baba Yaga’ / Hook is mysterious black feathers found and a newspaper cut out about them

UKS2 – ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ / Hook is a WW2 creating interest day with music and artefacts; ‘How to be an Explorer’ / Hook is a mysterious campsite set up at the front of school

During each unit of writing, which usually lasts a half term, KS1 and LKS2 will build up to a narrative and one non-fiction piece of writing while UKS2 will typically build up to a narrative plus two non-fiction pieces. Writing is formatively assessed throughout each unit with internal and external moderation sessions to quality assure any judgements made.

A typical unit of work consists of:

-Creating interest lessons

-Reading / immersion using the ‘Hook’ book

-Grammar activities linked to the book/hook

-Innovating and planning

-Writing phase (over a number of days)

-Editing and proof reading is done during each phase of writing

Editing and proof reading is done daily from year 2 onwards. Children at St Pauls make corrections (punctuation, spelling, missing words etc) and improve their writing (vocabulary, adding or extending sentences) against a success criteria using red pen. Children respond to any teacher marking at the start of a lesson using purple pen. Teacher modelling takes place regularly with scaffolds and word banks provided as necessary. Working walls are consistent across school using the headings – Hook / Vocabulary / Sentence / WAGOLL (What a good one looks like) / WAGON (What a good one needs).

Spelling

From Year 2, classes follow a progressive spelling scheme called Spelling Shed. Spelling Shed's approach to spelling involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols as well as using morphology to help spell through meaning. The carefully selected word lists and engaging activities provide opportunities to incorporate phonics and meaning to strengthen spelling skills and build vocabulary acquisition. Through exploring spelling patterns and rules, we aim to create confident and proficient spellers using a discrete teaching approach underpinned by phonics.

Children are also taught to:

·Spell accurately and identify reasons for misspellings

·Proof-read and edit their spellings in red pen

·Recognise and use word origins, families and roots to build their skills

·Use a dictionary and thesaurus

Handwriting

Teaching handwriting effectively impacts the wider curriculum. When taught effectively, handwriting is where children will see the biggest change and fastest improvement in their work; progress they are able to see, feel and enjoy.  Through our programme of teaching handwriting, we see those rewards reaped in a very short time span, giving the children something immediate.  Self-esteem and motivation levels rise which in turn influences children’s attitudes to learning in other subjects.  It also plays a part in their personal development because care, pride, concentration and perseverance are required qualities.

At St Paul’s, we follow a programme of regular handwriting lessons systematically called ‘Achieving Excellence in Handwriting’ by Martin Harvey. This scheme helps in ensuring that letters are initially well formed and then well joined, all the while being of the correct size.  We find that doing a little and doing it often is the key, but there are many other important ‘jigsaw pieces’ to fit in place, such as good quality writing tools and correct body posture. The handwriting style we teach is based on a semi-cursive style. It is simplistic but very clear and it does not have the ‘loops’ or ‘lead-ins’ which are features of more complex handwriting styles.

Writing Statement of Impact

The impact on our children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. With the implementation of the writing sequence being established and taught in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers and have the ability to plan and edit their own work. By the end of key stage 2, children have developed a writer’s craft: they enjoy sustained writing and can manipulate language, grammar and punctuation to create effect.

Supporting a range of abilities

Our writing curriculum is accessible for all pupils, as it is a subject that all children can enjoy and take part in. Tasks can be scaffolded by teachers to provide necessary support in order to complete tasks, which demonstrate the application of their knowledge, skills and vocabulary, alongside differentiated expectations from the Writing progression of skills, where necessary. Additional support may take the form of: concrete resources, visual clues, word banks, writing frames, the support of an additional adult and beyond.