Writing
Vision
And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
Through the teachings of Jesus, all can flourish spiritually, emotionally and academically throughout life, living out love and justice for all. Our Christian values of love, justice, compassion, wisdom, forgiveness and friendship underpin the life of the school community and impact on our daily lives. Guilden Sutton Church of England Primary School strives to provide the best possible education for our children. We aim for excellence within our happy, secure school where each individual’s achievements are valued and celebrated. By using a holistic approach, we will provide a curriculum that offers a diverse and challenging environment to inspire and motivate every child in our care.
Intent
At Guilden Sutton Church of England Primary School, we place paramount importance on the written word. We recognise its role in inspiring our children to unlock their potential across the curriculum and we strive to equip them with the skills and passion they need to be life-long learners.
At our school, we use a text-based approach to provide a broad and balanced English curriculum to ensure that children enjoy writing and see it as an interesting and enjoyable process. This approach encompasses focussed writing practise, including handwriting, spelling, widening vocabulary, and writing for different styles, purposes and audiences. We recognise the effect that a fluent, legible and coherent writing style can have on our pupils’ progress, both inside and outside of the school environment and we strive to provide opportunities for children to apply these skills across the curriculum.
Our writing curriculum is carefully planned to ensure that:
- Our children are able to acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions required for writing, as well as reading and spoken language.
- Our children can write clearly, accurately and coherently and see themselves as ‘real writers’
- Our children can take ownership of their writing, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
- Our children understand how to plan, practise and evaluate their writing.
- Our staff members are aware of planning, assessment and teaching and learning requirements for the writing curriculum.
- By the end of KS2 our children can write fluently and speedily, using joined handwriting throughout their independent writing, supporting their spelling.
Implementation
Our writing curriculum is based upon high quality texts that provide children with the opportunities to express themselves creatively using a variety of different genres. Texts are carefully selected to engage all of our children regardless of any barriers to learning. The chosen texts not only teach the core skills in line with the expectations of the National Curriculum but they also make cross-curricular links where appropriate. Projects with outside companies such as, The Literacy Company and Literacy Counts support the planning and teaching of writing across the curriculum and provide teachers with up to date texts and skills to engage all of our children. Our writing is planned to be rich in discussion, questioning, imitating and learning texts, developing new vocabulary and applying embedded vocabulary from previous learning.
Children are provided with regular opportunities to complete meaningful writing tasks for a range of purposes and audiences and they engage children to apply their prior knowledge whilst enhancing the progressive skills they are developing. At Guilden Sutton C of E Primary School shared writing lies at the heart of teaching writing. Teachers demonstrate high quality modelling through shared and guided writing. These opportunities allow the teacher to model composition, writing behavior and promote how to think as a writer whilst acting as a precursor to the class writing independently.
All learners are aware of their strengths and areas of development in their writing so they can take ownership of their own progress. Marking is used to provide next steps that scaffold and challenge children and regular assessments verify the progress they have made in relation to age related expectations. Those children identified as not achieving age related outcomes are provided with bespoke interventions in smaller groups which focus specifically on the gaps identified in their learning. Additionally, classroom support provides opportunities to model key skills, scaffold and assist with the completion of work.
The progression of work based on a particular text is documented clearly on a working wall within the classroom to promote the development of independence when writing. In addition, vocabulary walls and word banks are provided to assist the children when writing.
Children at Guilden Sutton C of E Primary School showcase written work on their class ‘washing line’. This can be updated at any point with a piece of written work that a child is particularly proud of and is positioned for all to see.
We believe that children should learn to become independent editors of their own work. From Key Stage 1, children begin learning the skills to effectively edit and ‘up-level’ their own work and support their peers when editing too. We recognise that the editing process involves children drawing upon everything they have learnt and we begin this process by providing time to reflect and teach children how to edit by focusing on a different editing skill. As children progress into Key Stage 2, the skills of editing are more embedded and children complete this task with increased independence.
Impact
Assessment in writing is ongoing and teachers carry out in-depth assessment of children’s independent writing regularly across a breadth of genres. Children are actively involved in this process and engage in discussion with the class teacher about the outcomes they have achieved, whilst using their assessment to inform their own personalised targets for writing.
Progress across all classes is closely monitored by the subject leader and senior leadership team. Writing in children’s books, learning walks, pupil voice interviews and regular, focused learning walks provide opportunity to monitor writing whilst gathering evidence of good practice which is then used to facilitate future planning.
As children transition into secondary school, we aspire that they are able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Our children will have acquired a wide vocabulary and have a strong command of the written word. Most importantly, they will have developed a love of writing with skills that can be transferred across the whole curriculum.
