Writing

At St George's we use The Literacy Tree scheme as part of our Writing Curriculum.

Intent:

At St. George’s Primary, we believe that ability to write is fundamental to our children succeeding; enabling them to access the next stage of their education and beyond.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that pupils enjoy writing and have passion and enthusiasm for it. Our aim is to ensure that pupils write clearly, accurately and coherently with a joined, legible and increasingly efficient handwriting style; write in different styles and for different purposes and audiences; develop a wide vocabulary and a solid understanding of the grammar rules and terminology appropriate for their age group. We aim that children will be able to spell accurately through the explicit teaching and investigation of spelling rules.

Our curriculum has also been designed to ensure that pupils are able to express themselves creatively and to communicate effectively with others.

Implementation:

At St. George’s CE Primary School, we believe that learning to write well for a range of purposes and audiences is fundamental to the wider success of children. We use ‘The Literary Curriculum’ to support our teaching of writing.

The Literary Curriculum is a complete book-based, thematic approach to the teaching of primary English that places children’s literature at its core. As a whole school approach, it provides complete coverage of all National Curriculum expectations for writing composition, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary, as well as coverage of spelling.

Through immersion in high quality texts, children become aware of the language skills of a writer and use this as a model for their writing. Using this model, children develop greater competence in the conventions of spelling, punctuation, sentence structures and text organisation. All plans lead to purposeful application within a wide variety of written outcomes and they support teachers in their delivery of exciting and engaging lessons. Where possible, writing units are linked to a foundation subject so that children can benefit from the links and deepen their understanding and each week children complete a longer written outcome in a foundation subject to embed writing skills for a variety of purposes.

In Reception:

Children are given opportunity to write and learn spelling rules through the ‘Read Write Inc’
Children are exposed to a number of key texts to inspire early mark making and oracy through 4 English carpet sessions a week.
Children complete focus tasks in English
Children are encouraged to apply their phonic skills to write independently across play based provision.

Across KS1 and KS2:

We deliver four weekly sessions with lessons inspired by the Literary Curriculum and on one day a week children complete an explicit spelling investigation and longer written outcome in a foundation subject.
Within English lessons, Children will focus on different types of texts: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. There is a variety of books used including picture books from Reception up to Year 6.
Children will have opportunities to write a length but to also complete shorter writing tasks.
The writing tasks have a focus on thinking about whom the audience is and what the purpose of the task is.
The writing tasks are meaningful and cover a range of genres such as, but not limited to: a story, diary entry, newspaper article, persuasive argument and a letter.
Throughout the unit of work, there will be grammar and punctuation lessons linked to their writing tasks to make these lessons more meaningful and purposeful.
Time is spent on preparation for writing. Some of the pre-writing activities we use to support and prepare the children for writing include: drama strategies such as hot seating, conscience alley and freeze framing; developing characterisation through role on the wall; ‘stepping a story’ and visualisation
Writing is appropriately scaffolded so that all children can succeed, through oral rehearsal, word banks, modelling, drama, planning organisers etc. Oracy skills are modelled and developed to help all children express themselves coherently and effectively prior to writing.
Children will be taught to self-correct, edit and improve their writing and that of others. Evidence of this can be found in books, in blue pen.

Handwriting:

Across the whole school we use the Letter-join programme to provide a consistent approach to the teaching of handwriting.

In Reception, as part of the RWI phonics programme, correct letter formation is taught and practiced each day. This is complemented through daily fine-motor skill activities and handwriting sessions from Letter-join.

When children reach Year 2, they are taught to use cursive handwriting. Handwriting sessions occur frequently each week from 4x weekly in KS1 to 2x weekly in Upper Key Stage 2.

Impact:

As a result of our writing ethos and a rigorous approach to the teaching of writing, our children will:

achieve high quality outcomes
make outstanding progress in relation to their individual starting points
leave our school with the skills they need to be a confident writer, but most importantly with an ability to communicate both verbally and through their writing
enjoy writing and view themselves as effective, competent writers

Attainment in writing is measured constantly throughout the year. At three assessment checkpoints, progress is tracked. Termly moderations take place, to quality assure judgements made. These are either in house, or as part of a cluster of local schools.

End of Key Stage writing: teachers will assess a selection of pieces of writing in Years 2 and Year 6, using this to inform reported teacher assessment judgements. Exemplification materials are used to support judgements made.