Writing at Pearl Hyde Primary School
The 2014 National Curriculum in England states that pupils should: ‘write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences’
-DfE, 2013
Intent
At Pearl Hyde, we believe that the ability to write with confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. We aim to teach our children to write fluently and for different purposes so that they can communicate their ideas, information and opinions in a wide range of contexts. We promote high standards of language and literacy by ensuring they have the skills needed to be able to write clearly, adapting their language and style for a range of purposes and audiences. We believe that children need to read, and have read to them, good models from which to develop their own writing. Writing is a complex process that draws upon a range of skills, including spelling, handwriting, grammar and punctuation. We aim to equip children with the skills necessary to develop as successful writers.
Our aim is for all children at Pearl Hyde Primary School is to:
Implementation
| Whole School Progression Map for the English Curriculum | |||||||||
| Reception | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | |||
| SRR – 4weeks | RWI | T4W | |||||||
| RWI | Fred’s Teaching – Guided Reading | SATs Prep – Fred teaching/SATs | |||||||
| T4W Oral Stories x 10 in Reception and x 10 in Year 1 | |||||||||
| RWI | Spelling Shed – whole school | ||||||||
| RWI | RWI Scheme – Cursive | ||||||||
Writing in our school – Reception to
February half-term Year 2
At Pearl Hyde Primary School, we are aware of the importance of accurate and high-quality phonics being taught rigorously and with fidelity to the scheme. Therefore, as a school, we follow the Read, Write Inc (RWI). phonics scheme, which ensures that our children are regularly assessed and exposed to new learning, which supports their development as readers and writers.
RWI is a complete literacy programme, which teaches all children to learn to read fluently and at speed through high-quality teaching that focuses on the individual sounds of letters in the English language. This programme focuses on teaching children how to blend, decode and segment words into letter sounds to support the development of their reading, comprehension, vocabulary and spelling, whilst also utilising these skills to teach children how to write these sounds down. In order to support this fundamental learning process, we use the RWI ‘Get Writing’ books to ensure that the written activities that the children complete are matched to their phonic knowledge and the sound that they have been learning in their daily lessons. RWI supports writing in the following ways:
As part of our phonics pedagogy, we ensure that children move through the programme when they are ready. As such, we have adopted a stage not age approach. This ensures that our phonics provision is purposeful and well-paced to support our children’s writing development.
Year 2 – Spring 2 to Year 6
Long-term plans have been designed by each phase, identifying rich, quality key texts to drive the teaching of writing and engage and excite the children. Other stimuli such as film clips, experiences, and artefacts are also used to engage the children in the process of writing. When planning a unit, a 3-phase structure is followed. This begins with becoming familiar with the genre, then capturing ideas and planning, and finally writing and presenting. Writing is taught through daily English lessons and opportunities to apply the skills learnt are planned across the curriculum. We aim, wherever possible, to create cross-curricular writing opportunities, as we believe that in order for children to see themselves as successful writers they need to be involved in writing for a range of different purposes and audiences.
At Pearl Hyde, we use the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach. This is based on our beliefs that: if you cannot say it, you cannot write it; and that children need opportunities to talk for writing and craft sentences orally before writing. Both oracy and reading feed into writing. We actively encourage our children to ‘magpie’ (borrow) ideas, grammar structures and patterns, and vocabulary, from the rich texts that they are exposed to in school, their personal reading and their favourite authors.
The structure of writing units follows the Talk for Writing process, which includes: cold writing in order to assess pupil’s prior attainment; an imitation phase in which children delve into a text and develop an understanding of its features; an innovation phase where children adapt the oral text to include their own imaginative ideas; an independent application phase in which children are able to apply what they have learned to create an individual piece.
Writing is taught using a whole class quality-first approach, which values every child’s thoughts and opinions in a supportive environment. This is done using the following pedagogical strategies:
Oracy
Orally retelling, using actions, discussing and questioning texts are all utilised to increase our children’s understanding of how to be writers. This builds vocabulary, ideas and the understanding of subtext for all children so that they can access challenging texts across our curriculum. These texts become the basis of our children’s learning journey, being used to develop independent writing skills.
Modelling Writing
The teacher talks aloud about the thought processes of a writer with the children. They model strategies in front of the children, communicating the strategies being used. Teachers may model writing skills such as punctuation, proofreading, editing, word selection, sentence construction and paragraphing. This can also be used as a collaborative approach in which the pupils contribute their ideas and thoughts for the teacher to write. The teacher models and teaches specific writing skills and there is the opportunity for discussion to choose the most effective or suitable ideas.
Pair/Group Work
The children work in pairs or in groups to provide the next sentence or next paragraph of the text. This may follow from the modelled or the shared writing process.
Guided Writing (Adapted Teaching)
Pupil groups are needs-led and are identified through ongoing assessments. The teacher or teaching assistant works with the group on a carefully selected task appropriate to that group’s needs and targets. This may focus on a particular aspect of the writing process rather than writing a complete piece. Misconceptions, gaps in learning and common errors will be addressed through targeted and flexible group work.
Independent Writing
Children are given opportunities to apply their understanding of the text type in their own writing. They are encouraged to plan, draft, write, edit and assess their work, applying the skills they have learnt throughout the unit of work on that particular text type. Each independent writer is then assessed and contributes towards their progress and attainment.
As children progress throughout the school, they are given many opportunities to write independently at length and to apply the skills they have learnt and practised in shared and guided writing. We aim to increase children’s stamina for writing as they move through the school, enabling them to write longer and more sustained pieces. Wherever possible, writing is made meaningful by being planned for a specific purpose, hooking into our children’s interests or in response to a particular first-hand experience.
Impact
As they progress through the school, children’s writing covers a wide range of genres. Pupils learn to recognise the features of each genre and to understand how and why a writer creates a particular style for a particular purpose. Grammar, punctuation and stylistic techniques taught to children are then applied in context, and children are encouraged to make links across genres, creating transferrable skills and sustained learning. As they approach the end of their writing journey, in Upper Key Stage 2, our students are skilled at adapting their writing to the purpose in hand, consciously choosing appropriate language, grammar and structural features appropriate to the task in order to express their own creativity and engage their reader.
Feedback is an integral part of the writing curriculum. Whole class feedback identifies misconceptions, celebrates successful examples and draws on the class as a whole to edit and improve. Paired work and adult feedback encourage children to check and perfect their work. Written feedback clearly identifies the next steps that children can take to further improve their work. Children are expected to respond to feedback, both verbal and written comments using their purple pens to edit and improve their writing.
At Pearl Hyde, writing is celebrated in many ways, through displays and celebration assemblies, which demonstrate to all students the high expectations that we set and this encourages all children to show the same level of pride and care in their work.