Writing

Intent 

In Writing, the intent of our curriculum is first and foremost to help children feel that they are writers and to develop a life-long love of writing. We focus on the skills, knowledge and understanding that our children need to become confident at transcription, composition and spelling. This is linked closely to our Christian values of creativity and perseverance and ‘letting our light shine’. We want our children to appreciate all forms of writing from, fiction, non-fiction and poetry from a wide range of model texts. 

The aims of our Writing Curriculum follow that of the National Curriculum, ensuring all children have access to the skills of handwriting, spelling and grammar. High expectations are set for all learners regardless of their background or skill level.  

Implementation

The Writing Curriculum is designed so that taught knowledge and skills are built upon each week, term and year, using a bank of high quality model texts. Our children are proactive in each writing lesson, identifying how their previous learning can be used to build up a bank of skills. Concepts are further strengthened and developed through multi-skills approach in which the children have the opportunity to express themselves through drama, games, talking and writing. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex texts and building up their knowledge of grammar contextually.  

The Talk for Writing approach is planned in three stages. The first stage is imitation. This is where the children get to learn a model text well by techniques such as story mapping, drama and immersion in the text. The second stage is to innovate the model text, using boxing up planning and shared writing. The third stage is invention. This is where the children invent their own text based on the original model text. Finally, the children will do an assessed piece of writing called the Hot Write, where they will produce an independent piece of writing with a cross curricular focus. 

Writing is timetabled as a daily session to ensure consistency and progression and opportunities for publishing and performing writing is woven into curriculum time. 

We also enrich the children’s writing skills by taking part in an initiative called Teaching live, which allows all key stage two classes to collaborate with other schools on the programme and to have their work published to the website weekly. 

Impact 

Children are an active part of assessing their own learning, through regular feedback in lessons and through the self and peer assessing of writing in line with targets given at the beginning of each writing unit  At the end of each unit, teachers assess children’s progress against the objectives of the National Curriculum through formative and summative assessment; these assessments build an ongoing picture of each child’s overall writing journey as they move from year group to year group, to ensure they are ready for the next stage of their learning. Pupils will leave our school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to appreciate and enjoy writing throughout their lives. 

If you would like any further information about our curriculum, please contact the school office.

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