Vision
Excellence achieved through care, creativity and challenge.
Intent
Our curriculum design ensures our pupils have the necessary skills to successfully communicate their thoughts and ideas in a range of text types. By the end of KS2, their handwriting is fluent, joined and legible and they are able to apply their spelling rules consistently accurately. They are also able to manipulate a full range of writing tools and techniques to write confidently for a range of audiences and purposes and can evaluate and improve their own writing and the writing of their peers.
Implementation
There are three purple threads running through the whole school’s approach to writing: composition; punctuation, grammar, vocabulary and spelling; and handwriting. Year-group specific statements have been adapted from the National Curriculum. Skills are taught explicitly through the use of success criteria and are modelled in age-appropriate texts used as ‘Good Examples’ in the writing sequence.
Our writing sequence follows distinct stages, re-setting each week for the introduction of a new purpose and audience. The writing task follows the learning theme’s Big Bang, specially-chosen stimulus or hook and is interleaved with our foundation curriculum so that pupils have the motivation and ideas to succeed. The weekly writing follows the sequence: analysis of the good example (which models new skills); planning; writing (including proof-reading); editing to upstage; and marking and improvement points. We begin a new writing task each week to ensure that, by the end of the year, pupils have had the opportunity to write for a broad range of purposes and audiences linked to the themes.
Pupils have non-negotiables from the previous year group for each piece of writing, which are a list of previously embedded skills. Teachers assess pupils on these non-negotiables at the beginning of each academic year and build on them systematically with the new year group’s skills as they are mastered. Success criteria is used to highlight new skills and is modelled in the good example for pupils to identify and discuss. Once a success criteria has been mastered by the majority of the class, it is added to the non-negotiables. Audience and purpose is clearly stated so that pupils have the motivation to write: one of the most important elements is that the writing task is based upon real, emotive experiences. This is partly due to our high percentage of pupil premium pupils in our catchment demography, who may otherwise not be able to access the writing.
Word banks and knowledge organisers provide useful and appropriate high-quality, and sometimes theme-specific, vocabulary that pupils can choose to use in their writing. As part of the writing sequence, pupils evaluate and improve their writing by editing to upstage their vocabulary.
Impact
Pupils complete two independent writes per half term, which are assessed against their non-negotiables. Thorough assessment is completed weekly by teachers; success criteria that has not been met becomes the improvement point. Foundation writes are also used to assess skills used across the curriculum. There are three assessment checkpoints per year so that teachers can assess progress and identify particular skills to target. Pupils also complete Grammar Hammer weekly in order to practise explicit grammar skills that can be transferred to writing. Spellings are tested weekly and any incorrect spellings are revisited during the ‘Have Another Try’ week at the end of each half term.
Enhancements
Throughout the year, there are opportunities for whole-school approaches to writing tasks linked to current affairs, for example during events such as the World Cup and World Book Day. This helps grow each pupils’ cultural capital as they become aware of events in the wider world around them. Every week, teachers choose a Star Writer to show their work to the English Lead and receive a token for their house; this work is showcased and celebrated on our website.
Writing Progression
