Writing

"I can shake off everything as I write. My sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn"

Anne Frank

Intent

Our Writing Curriculum aims to immerse the children in a range of high-quality texts. We use an evidence-based approach where teachers use these texts to explicitly model the writing process. As a result, children develop a rich vocabulary, growing knowledge of grammatical and spelling structures and fluent transcription, which they creatively and precisely apply to a variety of purposes, audiences and text types. When our children leave Puss Bank School and Nursery at the end of Key Stage 2, we want them to have an appreciation of literature and understand the skills needed to become proficient writers.

Implementation

Nursery

In Nursery, writing is developed through rich mark-making opportunities, which adults explicitly model throughout the provision. These early mark-making opportunities are provided through sensory and physical experiences, which create the foundation to the development and progress of children’s mark-making.

The focus of writing for the children as they enter Nursery is to distinguish between the different marks that they make. In preparing for Reception, they learn to ascribe meanings to marks they see in different places, and to give meaning to marks they draw and paint.

Role-play plays a significant role in providing numerous and regular mark-making opportunities. For example, ‘I’m writing a shopping list.’ Adults scribe what children are saying in our ‘big writing books,’ such as what activities they did at the weekend, or what they heard and saw during outside learning activities.

In the Spring term (before Reception year), children begin phase 2 phonics. Adults model writing graphemes and children rehearse these with a multi-sensory approach (application in sand, through play-dough, and use of chalk). Children participate in environmental print hunts and actively discuss what symbols and signs represent and ascribe meanings to what they see in a range of places.

Throughout the Nursery provision, we heavily focus on the physical side of children’s development and progress in their mark-marking and writing. Our day-to-day provision, ensures children strengthen their core muscles through ‘lying down’ play. In addition, gross motor activities, which strengthen children’s arms and shoulders and fine motor activities, which build strength and control in their hands and fingers have a significant place in the provision. This is further developed through the introduction of ‘Write Dance’ and ‘Dough Disco’ in the Spring term.

Reception

Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3

We use Talk for Writing to develop our pupils’ ability to communicate effectively as both writers and speakers. Texts have been carefully crafted to ensure children experience a range of purposes and audiences.

At the beginning of each English lesson children are warmed up to a grammar feature form the type of text being focused on.

Teaching begins with an initial assessment known as a 'cold' task. This involves presenting an engaging and rich starting point without prior instruction, aiming to see what pupils can achieve independently at the start of a unit and what they have remembered from previous learning. Evaluating their outcome, enables teachers to assess the key writing needs of the whole class and individual pupils.

The Imitation Stage begins with a creative ‘hook’ that captivates pupils with a sense of enjoyment, audience, and purpose. Pupils are then exposed to a high-level model text and they spend time internalising it using text-maps.  Understanding of this model text is deepened through activities which focus on the children reading as a reader and reading as a writer.

The Innovation Stage’s purpose is to explicitly model the planning and writing process to the children through modelled and shared writing. In addition, throughout this stage, the teacher is assessing the children’s writing, providing precise feedback and ideas for improvement.

The Independent Application allows children to apply what has been taught and practised in a piece of independent writing. This writing process is spread over several days, with time for editing. The final piece serves as the ‘hot’ task, clearly demonstrating progress throughout the unit.

Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6

Writing is taught through a high-quality text curriculum, where each mentor text is used to drive a fiction, non-fiction and poetry writing outcome with a specified purpose and audience.  We follow the ‘Enjoy, Explore, Practise, Apply’ writing process.

At the beginning of each English lesson, we use the ‘i’ model process of immerse, imitate, innovate, invent and improve to specifically teach a key grammar or punctuation objective which is directly linked to the text.

The purpose of the ‘Enjoy’ stage is to HOOK the children into the mentor text through a range of motivating activities. As part of this stage, pupils read and respond to the text. From the mentor text, a model text is created containing the key structural and grammar, vocabulary and punctuation objectives.

The ‘Explore’ stage involves the children reading as a writer and identifying the strategies employed by the author and their impact on the reader. The children use these key writing strategies to co-construct a tool kit for the writing outcome. The final part of this stage is for the children to gather content and plan for a new shared writing outcome which is explicitly modelled by the teacher.

The purpose of the ‘Practise’ stage is to explicitly model writing process to the children through modelled and shared writing. In addition, throughout this stage, the teacher is assessing the children’s writing, providing precise feedback and ideas for improvement.

The final stage allows children to ‘Apply’ what has been taught and practised in a piece of independent writing effectively using the toolkit. This writing process is spread over several days, with time for editing.

Impact

Our aims for all children at Puss Bank Primary School and Nursey are to:

·       Create enthusiastic, competent and thoughtful writers who can write for a range of purposes and

audiences.

·       Provide children with access to new vocabulary and grammar.

·       Provide children with a range of high-quality texts in a range of genres in which they can base their own

writing.

·        Create writers with a strong understanding of handwriting and the transcription processes of writing.

·       Pupils to use the correct tense and select language to match the style or genre of writing.

·       Provide opportunities to activate prior learning through access to genres across the whole curriculum.

·       Develop inquisitive and curious writers across genres and texts.