Intent
At Cockfield Primary school, writing is strongly linked to our reading curriculum. We aim to deliver an engaging, exciting curriculum that allows pupils to demonstrate their creativity and imagination. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to engage with quality literature and real life experiences to help develop an enthusiastic approach towards writing.
Our intent of teaching of writing is clear:
- To provide pupils with the skills and knowledge to be accomplished writers, who are confident in communicating their own knowledge and ideas.
- To empower pupils to adapt their language and style dependent upon the context, audience and purpose.
- To provide pupils with real, authentic writing
- To allow pupils to engage with the authentic process of writing (gathering ideas, planning, drafting, reviewing and editing)
- To provide exciting stimuli for writing linking to quality literature and engaging stimuli. videos, images, experiences.
- To instil a love of writing that will continue with the child.
How do we teach writing?
We begin teaching writing in Nursery (not that the children know about it!) We plan activities in Nursery which develop gross and fine motor skills, concentration and also phonological (sound) awareness, which are the ‘building blocks’ for successful reading and writing.
As children move into Reception, these planned opportunities continue to be provided however we begin more focussed teaching of sound knowledge and how this links to recording different sounds. Over the year children to write sounds, then combine sounds to make words and then move on to writing captions and even sentences! Children also develop their writing through ‘Drawing Club’ – although if you aren’t in ‘The Club then we can tell you no more!
In KS1 and KS2 we teach writing through a planned and consistent writing curriculum. This includes:
- Daily writing lessons with embedded grammar.
- Spelling Shed scheme followed for the teaching of Spellings.
- Bespoke teaching sequence of writing followed (see below)
- Whole school genre overview followed to ensure progression and challenge across the years.
- Regular staff CPD to support staff subject knowledge.
- Quality, engaging writing stimuli linked to the Reading Spine, wider curriculum topics and pupil interests.
- Real life writing opportunities
- High quality teaching from teachers
- Magpie books to be used by pupils to capture language and spellings.
We teach children to write for a range of purposes using different genres (text types) throughout each school year. Each of these ‘cycles’ or writing follows the same structure which takes place over a series of weeks to ensure that there is time to teach and embed new skills and for children to learn to used these with independence and purpose. Once children have secured their writing skills in their English lessons then then embed them by using them across other curriculum areas.
The sequence of lessons which we follow for each cycle of teaching writing is:
This reduces cognitive load for children because they don’t need to think about next and so they can concentrate on applying and securing their skills.
What impact will this have?
- Pupils are exposed to a variety of genres which allows the opportunity to practice, build upon and embed skills and knowledge of each genre.
- Pupils are enthusiastic to write.
- Pupils will reach the expected age related expectations for writing.
- Pupils will be resilient in editing and redrafting their work.
Spelling
In Reception and Y1 we teach children spelling patterns as part of their Bug Club phonics lessons. When children have finished their daily phonics teaching, they learn spelling patterns through being taught, rehearsing and using a new spelling pattern each week. Children are set homework each week to practice using these spelling patterns using Spelling Shed.
There are national expectations for the spellings which children will be able to independently spell correctly and use in their own work in their writing.
Government guidance for spelling
Handwriting
We teach children explicitly how to join handwriting using Letter Join Writing scheme and then provide opportunity to practice their skills to embed them.
