Writing:

Intent:

At Willaston Primary Academy, our writing curriculum aims to inspire children to develop a love for writing. It is an integral part of our curriculum and we strive to provide an engaging and exciting curriculum which promotes a love for writing and develops a clear understanding of the writing process. We want our children to see themselves as authors and show pride in their work.

Our children are exposed to high-quality texts from a wide range of authors that inspire their own writing. We believe that writing and reading naturally go hand-in-hand and we highly value the importance of reading to further develop the writing of our children. We also highlight the importance of the purpose and context of our writing as it leads to flair and effective writing composition, creating high quality outcomes.

Our children are taken on a learning journey which enables every child to leave our school with the skills of a competent writer. We intend for our children to:

• Enjoy the writing process
• Write for a purpose and audience
• Be given the opportunity to plan, draft, re-draft and edit their writing
• Be able to assess their own writing and create targets
• Develop their own ‘voice’ as an author
• Display automatic transcription skills that ensure that their writing is well-presented, punctuated and spelt correctly, using the strategies taught to them throughout their primary journey
• Be able to re-read and edit their work, improving on their writing so that every piece of work that they produce is written to the best of their ability
• Transfer the skills taught within writing sessions across to other subjects and maintain their pride and level of their work in these subjects

Implement:

At Willaston Primary Academy, we use a book led approach to writing and children develop their skills by exploring a wide range of high-quality texts. We explore a range of models and use these to help our children develop an understanding of how to manipulate sentences and how to think like an author, choosing our vocabulary consciously and carefully.

We aim for our children to be able to write coherently when writing fiction and non-fiction pieces, applying any grammar taught appropriately and fluently. Our writing lead and headteacher work alongside teachers to ensure that their lessons and plans are progressive for each year group. Using the National Curriculum, teachers carefully plan their lessons with an awareness of any prior learning from previous year groups to ensure that any new learning can be taught appropriately. Any grammar taught is also from the National Curriculum and is modelled to our children in the correct context and genre.

We have two set lesson structures across KS1 and KS2 that our class teachers follow to ensure that we cover all of the necessary skills that our curriculum demands. We heavily target handwriting in our EYFS and in KS1 to ensure that our pupils develop a handwriting style that is automatic and natural to them in preparation for KS2. Read Write Inc is our phonics scheme that teaches our pupils to read but also to spell. Alongside this, we have a weekly spelling focus that includes the common exception words for each year group and in Year 2, we use the Oak Academy spelling to supplement our teaching.

In KS2, we continue to use the Oak Academy spelling to support our planning and continue the weekly spelling focus, which is mapped out for the year. We explicitly teach spelling rules each week and have a week to focus on the common exception words or the specific year group words. We aim to equip our pupils with the tools and techniques for mastering complex spellings.  

Early Years

Children learn to write through a combination of play and directed activities. They are given a variety of resources to encourage writing and mark making such as paper, post-its, clip boards etc. Our learning environment supports writing through play, including our role-play area, menus, orders and invitations. Teachers encourage children to begin to write through play and in planned activities. In our nursery, staff plan activities to develop fine motor skills and children are taught how to write their name. In reception, this is continued alongside the teaching of phonics and letter formation is a priority when writing in reception. They learn to spell words by identifying sounds and then representing the sounds through a letter or letters. Children in reception start to use books as a stimulus for their writing.

KS1

The children in KS1 also follow a book-led curriculum which is used to support their ideas and provides a model for teachers and pupils to follow. The focus in years one and two is to engage pupils in writing and enabling them to write and providing them with the opportunity to write sentences, building up to form short narratives. They will also have the chance to write about real life events where possible. The planning of writing in KS1 ensures that all of the appropriate areas of grammar are taught.

KS2

In KS2 we continue to use high-quality texts to engage our pupils and support the teaching of writing. Our pupils will, again, have opportunities to write about real life experiences as well as a range of purposes generated by our chosen texts. We aim for our children to become more reflective about their writing, modelling and teaching them how to think as a writer and develop their writer’s voice. We want our children to be able to evaluate their work and edit it independently by years 5 and 6. In LKS2, our teachers will support pupils in the evaluation of their work, giving verbal feedback as well as written feedback to help improve their work. When modelling, our KS2 staff think aloud and edit and improve their work as they write, supporting our children with the writing process. Unlike KS1, our KS2 pupils are provided with opportunities to write for a range of purposes as well as simple, coherent narratives.

In KS2, we have developed a new weekly writing process. At the beginning of the week, pupils will have a grammar session which looks at the specific grammar features that might be required in the genre of writing for that week. They will then look at these features within a written piece and evaluate and discuss how it is used before the teacher models an example of their own. The children are then encouraged to use their learning from the grammar session, written example and teacher model to then write their own. We encourage our pupils to re-read and edit their own work after each paragraph before continuing.

Impact

What we aim to achieve from our writing curriculum is:

• Children develop their own ‘writers voice’
• Children will be secure in basic skills
• Children will be able to write with automaticity
• Children will understand the features of genres and be able to write for a purpose and audience
• Children will write for pleasure
• Children will be able to reflect upon their own work and set their own targets