Writing

Our approach to writing is Jane Consodine The Write Stuff to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.

The intent of this approach is to ensure that all of our children are exposed to high quality texts that stimulate quality responses to reading, high quality writing and purposeful speaking and listening opportunities. Our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing. Writing is taught through a number of different strategies. We believe that children need lots of rich speaking and drama activities to give them the imagination and the experiences that will equip them to become good writers.

The intent of The Write Stuff is to sharpen the teaching and learning of writing so that:

🌟 Pupils who understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.

🌟 Standards improve because many worked examples are provided over the year that extend understanding through a wide range of genres and non-fiction text types.

🌟 Children have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.

🌟 Pupils know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.

🌟 Children have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.

🌟 Teachers have clear pathways of how to guide pupils in weak areas such as cohesion and paragraphs.

🌟Support for teachers so that they have a deeper and more flexible knowledge of sentence structure.

The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

Children will be respected as individual writers, provided with regular opportunities to make individual choices and encouraged to develop their own creativity. Regular practise of key writing skills will provide children with the confidence to apply these in a range of independent situations whereby they have the chance to show what they have internalised. The range of writing experiences we provide will enable all children to alter their long-term memory and knowledge more, remember more and be able to do more as writers.

• By the end of KS2 we expect our children to:
• Enjoy writing and view themselves as effective, competent writers;
• Have a good understanding of the purpose of writing and can write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences.
• Have a wide vocabulary that they use in their writing.
• Leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught.

We aim to meet the expectations of the Early Learning Goals and the National Curriculum and, when possible, exceed these and ensure that children make good progress in writing during their time at Woodford Halse Primary Academy.

Therefore, we aim to achieve:

• Outcomes at the end of KS1 in writing are at least in line with or above national averages for attainment at both standards.
• Outcomes at the end of KS2 in writing are at least in line with national or above averages for attainment at both standards and progress.
• The % of pupils working at Age Related Expectations in writing within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
• The % of pupils working at Greater Depth in writing within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.