Writing

Intent

Learning to write is an essential life skill for all children. Therefore, providing opportunities for children to write in real life contexts as well as for pleasure and enabling them to build skills and knowledge that they will need throughout their life is essential in becoming effective written communicator. In order to achieve this, in every block that is planned, teachers identify the audience and purpose for the unit, which is shared with the children so that they understand who will read their writing and what they are writing it for. Our writing curriculum intends on meeting the aims of the National Curriculum and teach children to:

‘write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences’

We want children to be able to write for a range of purposes and audiences, through: solid understanding of grammar; using a wide range of vocabulary; using known spelling patterns and neat, legible handwriting.

Implementation

Our writing curriculum implementation is built around our school curriculum aims: 

Experiences

We want children to experience quality texts, quality authors and quality learning experiences. During our sequences of learning, children will be provided with experiences that will help develop their writing. How can you be expected to write about something you have no experience of? In order to overcome this, we provide many such experiences such as: walking in the woods to write a setting description based there; recounting a trip taken in another subject area; interviewing a visitor to the school; writing a letter to a local member of Parliament on an issue impacting them or observing and ancient ritual of mummification before writing a set of instructions.  

Oracy

Our core texts for English lessons are carefully chosen, ensuring that they are language rich and challenging. Having exposure to well written, high quality texts provides children with examples to aspire to. Where possible and appropriate, our core texts for English units are thematic to the topics being covered in other areas of the curriculum. In doing this, children are able to use knowledge and vocabulary in these areas to write outcomes using a wealth of information.   

Aspirations

At Whitleigh Primary school, we want children to see themselves as writers and take ownership and independence over their writing. Teachers will develop well planned and thought out sequences to allow children to learn through well-structured small steps in learning.  

English process to enable writing curriculum

Writing Process

EYFS

In the Early Year Foundation Stage, vocabulary and oracy are a priority so the environment and provision is language rich. All learning spaces, including the learning pods, continuous provision spaces and outdoor learning spaces provide and encourage a wide range of texts, stories, print and opportunities for mark making and writing. Adults within our school frequently model writing, which in turn provides excellent examples for the children and encourages them to write for themselves.

KS1

In KS1, time allocated to teaching English is 1 hour English lesson daily, as well as extra time for phonics, handwriting, spellings, Renaissance Reading and Reciprocal Reading.

KS2

In KS2, time allocated to teaching English is 1 hour English lesson daily, as well as extra time for handwriting, spellings, Renaissance Reading and Reciprocal Reading.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is shown within the children’s engagement in lessons and outcomes in their books. There will be examples of interesting, creative writing as well as writing in real life contexts. Children will communicate in a variety of contexts as well as for a variety of audiences. The steps in the learning sequence will be evident and show progression.

By the end of Key Stage 2, children will able to write choosing and manipulating language choices for the impact it has on the reader. They will be able to use writing and styles that they have read previously to base their ideas on. As well as this, they will be able to able to follow the writing process independently. Children will be able to transfer their writing skills to all areas of the curriculum.