Writing
Aims
At St Martin’s , we recognise that writing is integral to all aspects of life and we endeavour to ensure that children develop a lifelong, healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards writing. The skill of writing enables pupils to communicate with themselves and others while documenting and conveying their knowledge and ideas. Building on experiences, it encourages expression and higher order thinking skills to develop. Thus, creating a culture of writing in our school ensures our children are given the best opportunities to build their capacity and confidence in a range of writing styles . By creating a stimulating environment and employing appropriate resources, we are determined to provide all pupils with a supportive writing curriculum which will allow learners to recognise their full potential
Our aim is for every child to be motivated to write and to enjoy writing. We hope that every child will view themselves as a writer. Children should feel a need to write, and experiencing enjoyment in practising the craft of writing. They will then feel confident and content when engaging in the different processes of writing and enjoy being a part of a writing community. Our children will view writing as a pleasurable, purposeful and satisfying experience.
Teaching strategies and approaches
At St Martin’s we use the Talk for Writing approach when teaching English lessons. This approach is powerful because it is based on the principles of how people learn. The movement from imitation to innovation to independent application can be adapted to suit the needs of learners of any stage. A key feature is that children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’ as well as close reading. The approach moves from dependence towards independence with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully.. From EYFS to Year 6, teachers chose a core text from the school book spine to use as a stimulus for writing.
In Reception, the learning of writing follows the Early Years Foundation Stages Framework. Children are given opportunities to extend their understanding of language learning through play and investigation, developing their characteristics of learning.
The National Curriculum describes what must be taught in key stages 1 and 2. The school has a writing progression document which sets out the key objectives in writing for each year group. This document can be found below.
In addition the school has a genre sequence document for each key phase to ensure that chidlren have the opportunity to write for different purposes across the curriculum and the chance to regularly practise and develop the skills needed for a particular genre throughout their time at the school. These documents can be found below.
The main features of writing lessons:
Shared writing:
- Provides opportunities for children, as developing writers, to use and consolidate new learning
- Enables the teacher and children to experience the writing process together
- Provides an opportunity for children to experiment with what they are learning
- Allows children to gain confidence as part of collective authorship
- Provides an environment for children to discuss and evaluate what makes effective writing
- Helps children to build up and use a language to talk about writing
- Provides support for children with English as an additional language, when confronted by the demands of written English
- The teacher and the children may collaborate to plan or develop a piece of writing that challenges and extends the children’s independent writing skills
- The teacher may model aspects of writing using children’s contributions
- The teacher may focus upon the structure and content of writing features, revision and improvement
- Shared writing is usually linked to reading e.g. using texts as models
Guided Writing
- Children may work in small groups depending upon their scaffolding needs
- The teacher focuses on specific, challenging aspects of writing.
- The children work on individual pieces of writing, often linked to their reading, using the knowledge they have acquired from word and sentence level work.
- As writing develops the teacher focuses on the children’s skills, and can give explicit feedback to help children progress.
- The children are taught how to plan, draft, re-draft, revise, edit and proof-read their writing
Independent writing activities
- Are well organised to ensure progression
- Apply specific learning points
- Are focused on planning, drafting, reflecting and redrafting
- Have planned time for self and peer review and evaluation
Grammar
In KS1 and KS2 the teaching of grammar is incorporated into core literacy. The grammar taught is found in the year group’s National Curriculum Grammar Appendix and is detailed in the school’s writing progression document.
Spelling
Literacy medium term planning includes the spelling pattern/strategy being focused on, informed by National Curriculum for English .The No Nonsense Spelling Programme is used from years 2-6 and integrated into the teaching of writing. Weekly spelling lists are issued and are published on class webpages so that they can be accessed by parents In KS1, spelling practise reflects the phonics phase and graphemes/phonemes being taught during that week.
Cross Curricular Writing
Teachers seek to take advantage of opportunities to make cross-curricular links where relevant. They plan for pupils to practise and apply the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired through English lessons to other areas of the curriculum.
