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English - Writing

Writing at Windmill Primary School

At Windmill Primary School, we believe that all children have the potential to become great writers. Being able to communicate ideas, thoughts and feelings through the written word is a life skill and we aim to inspire our children to love and appreciate the power of writing.

Intent

Across our writing curriculum, a range of genres and purposes for writing are sequenced so that the children make progress in different styles of writing. Writing units can last a few weeks at a time, focusing on a particular type of writing.

We want our children:

  • To develop a love of writing.
  • To see themselves as real writers
  • To see writing as an interesting and enjoyable process
  • To become accomplished in knowing how to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. 
  • To be confident to explore and experiment with sentence structure and vocabulary
  • To know how to use punctuation and grammar to control their sentences and structure their writing. 
  • To develop a rich vocabulary which they know how to use appropriately.
  • To have the skills and knowledge to make educated attempts at spelling new words that they meet.
  • To know how to edit and improve their writing
  • To develop a fluent and neat style of handwriting.

In order to achieve this as teachers and leaders we need to.

  • Help our children develop a good knowledge of phonics to springboard children to become fluent writers
  • Provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and enhance pupils
  • Help our children to acquire a wide vocabulary
  • Help our children spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn
  • Help our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purpose and audiences.
  • Ensure our children have a solid understanding of grammar and apply it effectively in their writing
  • Encourage our children to take pride in their presentation
  • Ensure our children move through a progressive curriculum- building upon previous teaching with regular assessment.

Implementation

In Early Years, mark making and fine motor skills take priority and children have access to mark making tools and resources throughout the day as well as adult directed activities. Adults have a clear understanding of how to support children to achieve their personal goals in their mark making/ writing. Children are taught how phonemes are represented through graphemes and use the ‘Read, Write Inc’ programme to teach this directly. We use quality texts to promote a range of vocabulary and text types. Each term is dedicated to teaching different features of writing with an end goal of being able to write simple sentences using phonic knowledge, finger spaces and beginning to use punctuation such as a full stop. Development Matters non – statutory guidance is referenced in our curriculum and helps adults to support children’s development towards achieving their Early Learning Goals.

 

In Key Stage 1 and 2 children:

  • Follow the National Curriculum
  • Writing is taught in ‘genre’ blocks. Blocks are labelled A and B. Block B is when the same genre is revisited later in the year, to enable chance to reinforce, apply and further enhance their skills in relation to the genre.

Each Writing Block contains the following:

  • A good quality model text is deconstructed so that children can see the features and grammatical devices that they are aiming to include in their own writing.
  • Phase 1: Sentence level focus. This is based around sentence level work and writing good quality sentences. We use our ‘Sentence level curriculum’ objectives, and our year group objectives, to identify the specific grammatical skills that the children need to be taught that will help enhance their writing
  • Phase 2: Structured writing (Moving towards paragraph level.) It is important to note that this will be age appropriate, however the aim is to move the children past just writing individual sentences.
  • In relation to the genre/ story, five plot points/ paragraphs will be identified by the teacher. The aim is to write a paragraph a day, giving children the opportunity to apply the skills that they have been taught into a longer passage of writing. 
  • The children will be given experiences such as drama. role play, storytelling, visual stimuli and opportunities to “talk in order” to build opportunities to rehearse sentence structure and the use of new vocabulary
  • Children will be specifically taught how to edit their work
  • In this phase the children will be given the opportunity to:
  • Plan their ideas
  • Have access to the teacher demonstrating their thinking through modelled writing each day
  • Orally rehearse their ideas before they write
  • Opportunity for shared writing
  • Edit their work in a coloured pe

 

  • Phase 3: Text level. Publishing/ Independent writing. The children may have the opportunity to publish their work. They may also have the opportunity to enter an independent writing phase, at least once a half-term.
  • Where possible feedback to individual children will be immediate and targeted on specific areas of improvement. Children can then respond immediately to the feedback that they have received.

Spelling

Follow objectives according to the National Curriculum objectives.

 

Handwriting:

We teach children to use a cursive style of handwriting, Year 1 teach the ‘kicks and flicks’ and Year 2 teaches the joins.

 

Impact:

Teachers use assessment as an integral part of the teaching and learning process and use this to plan the next steps and set writing targets.

 At Windmill we use:

  • Formative assessment grids (statements from the N.C.) These can be found in the purple blooks and are updated each term.
  • From the independent write, targets are set and shared with the children.
  • Verbal and in the moment feedback is given during lessons.
  • LA’s are highlighted after each lesson, to indicate success against the objective.

 

The impact on the children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience. With the implementation of the new ‘phased’ writing process becoming more established and taught in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers and have the ability to punctuate their work.

By the time the children move onto secondary school we want them to be masters of the writing process:-

  • The children will be confident writers who take pride in their accomplishments and have a love of writing.
  • Attainment and progress of writing will be high for all children with more children achieving age related expectations.
  • Children will have the tools to be able to apply their writing skills across all subject areas.
  • Children will understand and apply the skill of editing at all times when they are writing and know that is a sign of a good writer.