Writing

Rational

At St Mary’s, we endeavour to create a love for writing. We want every child to leave Year 6 with the skills of an excellent writer, who truly understand the power words has to change the world around them. As William Wordsworth once stated the act of writing is to:

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.“

At St Mary’s pupils will have the ability to write with fluency; thinking about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and know how they will achieve this. They will have an extensive bank of vocabulary and a knowledge of writing techniques to extend details or description and can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures. Pupils will be display good transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated, spelled correctly and neat. They will be able to re-read, edit and improves their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability. Throughout their time at St Mary’s, children develop their skills by exploring a whole range of high quality texts with a focus on exploring a range of models of excellence and using these to guide the drafting and editing process. The core of our writing curriculum is the National Curriculum for England, which is supported by Read, Write, Inc, Join-It Handwriting and Read, Write, Inc Spelling schemes. A variety of approaches to support delivery of the writing curriculum across the school were researched by our subject leader who provides regular CPD for staff. Read, Write Inc, which supports our reading curriculum, is a systematic, synthetic phonics scheme that is validated by the Department for Education. This foundation ensures that pupils can apply the phonics code required for them to become confident writers.

Our intentions in writing are for children to:

Write for a purpose
See themselves as real writers
Take ownership of their writing
See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process
Acquire the ability to organise and plan their written work
Understand the power that words can have

The curriculum has been specifically sequenced in a logical progression to ensure that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before: Early Years to Year 6. This enables our pupils to know more and remember more. End points and target points within objectives are identified for each year group through a whole school grammar, punctuation, spelling and word class progression plans.

Teachers short term planning is developed using the medium-term plan to ensure that the two key aspects – Transcription (spelling and handwriting) and Composition (vocabulary, grammar and punctuation) – are taught. Lessons are contextualised to engage the children further with their learning either linked to fictional texts or humanities. This planning includes assessment for learning opportunities, the learning objective for each lesson, linked success criteria and differentiated tasks to meet the objective. Within the lesson, teachers check pupils understanding effectively, address any misconceptions swiftly and encourage pupils to edit their own work using a purple pencil. The curriculum is designed and delivered in a way that allows pupils to know more and remember more. Key concepts are embedded in their long-term memory so they can apply them fluently when writing independently.

Impact

The impact on our children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience. With the implementation of the writing sequence being established and taught in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers and have the ability to plan, draft and edit their own work. By the end of key stage 2, children have developed a writer’s craft, they enjoy sustained writing and can manipulate language, grammar and punctuation to create effect.

By the time children leave our school they will:

Have a love for writing and write for enjoyment
Be able to produce written work in all areas of the curriculum to a high standard
Be confident to write for a range of different purposes