Learning Intention
Our curriculum embeds the progression of developmental skills in Oracy, Grammar, Punctuation, Vocabulary and Knowledge from EYFS to the end of KS2 through innovative and enriching teaching experiences. It is designed to be meaningful to the children, making relevant links not only to their chosen interests but to the community and world around them. We believe that it is the quality of the journey, where the children are offered a breadth of rich and deep learning opportunities to develop skills and knowledge so that children have a clear purpose for writing, which is evident in the quality of the work they produce. Research plays an integral role in the development of teaching pedagogies within writing to best support the children to achieve their potential – expectations are limitless.
Aims
- To build on prior understanding and knowledge
- To facilitate opportunities for creativity and independence.
- To underpin writing with fundamental grammar and punctuation skills
- To widen vocabulary and teach careful choices
- To expose children to a wealth of texts
- To model writing with the children and provide opportunities for “talk”
- To set high expectations of all children
- To encourage reflection and innovation of written pieces
Learning Journey
Writing is taught across the school linked to the half termly “Big question” in each year group – this is planned collaboratively with the children and teaching team and allows for purposeful links to be made to reading and
other subject disciplines within the curriculum where possible. Within early years and Key stage 1, children are taught story writing using Tales Toolkit aimed at developing skills and characteristics of effective learning
including language, literacy, oracy and creativity. All the children are involved, allowing them to lead the stories they tell.
Across Key stage 1 and Key stage 2, skilled leaders have developed a sequenced approached to the teaching of writing, where children become immersed within the content and genre they are writing through stages.
This is based on research methodologies, published by Emma Caulfield and Liz Chamberland, and the sharing of best practise.
‘Effective composition involved articulating and communicating ideas and then organising them coherently as a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context and increasingly wide
knowledge of vocabulary and grammar…’ National Curriculum 2014
|
Phase 1 |
Phase 2 |
Phase 3 |
|
|
Hook |
Understanding as a Reader |
Understanding as a Writer |
Create and Compose |
|
The use of purposeful texts, short stories, video extracts, objectives, images, poems, drama to introduce a purpose for writing.
“…using these as hooks and new ways to stimulate the children gets them excited in a lesson and it’s this excitement and engagement means they’ll achieve most” (Paretti, 2013). |
The development of word understanding, inference, authors word choices and how meaning is enhanced, sequence of texts and retrieval of key information to show a true understanding. |
The analysis and exploration of structure, language and organisation is embedded moving onto the development of knowledge, widening of vocabulary and the practise and application of punctuation and grammar. |
The use of shared, modelled, supported and guided writing is embedded, building independence…
To Plan To Write To Edit To Evaluate
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Phase 1 |
Phase 2 |
Phase 3 |
|
This phase of our writing cycle is where the children are immersed into the text genre and topic they will be exploring.
This is the phase in which children are "hooked" into their learning and begin to understand the text as a reader.
For example:
|
This phase of our writing cycle is where the children are taught to understand the text they are exploring as a writer.
For example:
|
This phase of our writing cycle is where the children become the writer and apply skills and knowledge into composing their own piece of writing.
For example:
|
Oracy progression across the school underpins the teaching of writing along with the use of research to influence the teaching of vocabulary in order to explicitly teach, practise and apply ambitious vocabulary, which is embedded within the teaching sequence of writing (Liz Chamberlain, Inspiring Primary Writing, 2016).
It was reported in our most recent KS2 writing moderation in 2019 that, "There is always a clear purpose for writing which seamlessly links with the topic work chosen by the children so they want to write and that is clear in their work at all levels".
Learning Environment and Immersion
Reading and writing are promoted and celebrated across our school, where children are excited to share their learning with others; through displays, vocabulary and literature; and through shared curriculum planning and our cross curricular approach, thus emphasising the importance of reading for writing, alongside reading for pleasure.
Our approach to an immersive curriculum allows fluent application to be made across the curricular allowing children to make purposeful links. The skills that children develop are linked to, and applied in, every subject - the skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening enable them to communicate and express themselves in all areas of their work at school. Literacy skills are also highlighted and specifically targeted in reading and writing across the curriculum to enable the children to practise and embed their skills and write with a clear purpose.
Assessment for Learning
Writing assessments are captured through a collection of formation and summative approaches to inform teaching staff where the children are within the age related expectations.
In writing, these include: the use of the writing skills age related expectations; transitional meetings across class teachers at the end of each term; independent and group writing opportunities; moderation across classes, phrases and the schools in the ELT; profession discussions between leaders and class teachers, where the teaching sequence is evidenced clearly, adapted to suit the needs of individual classes. During these discussions, areas of strength and weakness with the class are discussed, working together to create actions to implement.
Personalised short term planning ensures that teachers plan for children to demonstrate their understanding of different text genres, grammatical techniques and reading skills in a range of settings, and ensures that this enables them to show both their fluency, knowledge, application understanding and comprehension skills to the best of their ability. This may include videos, voice recordings, cross-curricular writing, verbal discussions, feedback from personalised programs, the use of our learning toolkits and assessment data. Feedback is given verbally to the children wherever possible to develop further discussion and to address the children’s misconceptions and make accelerated progress towards meeting and exceeding the age related expectations.
Monitoring and review
The Literacy Leader is responsible for the rigorous monitoring of reading and writing through book and planning looks, pupil voice, lesson pop ins and whole school CPE. Ongoing analysis of outcomes enables the Literacy Leader to identify vulnerable groups of children across school and support the teaching team in enabling children within these groups to accelerate progress. Feedback to the teaching team then informs next steps in monitoring and support so that there can be personalised and effective JPD planned to address areas for development, through whole school training or more personalise coaching plans. Our children are involved in this monitoring process in a number of ways across the academic year. Children are empowered to talk about their learning through the curriculum journals and their own books during pupil voice opportunities. Our children can talk how the skills they develop in reading and writing link to other areas of the curriculum and wider world.
