Writing

The school bases its writing, in part, on the reading scheme developed by Pie Corbett. This enables a more consistent and progressive approach to the teaching of writing supported by the work of our curriculum. Alongside this, our writing is also stimulated from quality books which inspire and are linked to our topics of study through the year. In doing this, we aim to achieve two pieces of extended writing per half-term, often which are cross-curricular. We also ensure children understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise. They are also provided with a clearer view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured robustly with any misconceptions addressed swiftly. Using this approach, teachers can give pupils clear guidance with less confident areas, such as cohesion and paragraph formation. Pupils are given a stronger concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes. They also know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and interesting.

The school also employs an approach to handwriting using Little Wandle's Happy Handwriting resources. Our approach to teaching spellings and grammar follows a Nelson programme providing those pupils ready for it with a stronger toolkit from which to achieve the Expected and Greater Depth Standards. 

When required and in addition to that which is carried out during Phonics teaching, there will be discreet spelling sessions in class and taught themes will be based upon quality texts, allowing pupils the opportunities to "mine" and analyse for examples of the key themes. As a school, we feel that strong writers start from being strong and avid readers. 

Along with interesting and well-chosen class novels, guided reading sessions take place throughout the week and enable pupils to experience different themes from established authors. There will be grammar and word level tasks stemming from these; followed by shared, modelled writing; culminating in the pupils undertaking an independent writing exercise utilising the taught techniques.   

Our Writing curriculum focusses on the purpose for writing and what different 'genres' or 'text types' have in common. The two writing purposes we will be using are:

Writing to Entertain

Writing to Inform

KS1 only focus on the purposes of writing to Entertain and Inform. 

Our overall aim is to ensure standards of writing improve and our pupils have the stamina, knowledge and skills to write independently. This can all be achieved through a combination of our teaching strategies and increased frequency of writing tasks.