Barming Pre-School and Primary School
Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Responsible And Make Good Choices
Writing
Writing:
At Barming Primary School, the intent of our writing curriculum is to deliver a curriculum that strives to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners; English learning is key in this.
Intent
We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach. Careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s English learning is relevant and meaningful: where possible writing and the topic that we are covering in History and Geography. We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.
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
Implementation
Our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability, additional needs to flourish to become the very best version of themselves they can possibly be.
EYFS and Years 1 & 2:
The children in EYFS, Years 1 & 2 follow the ‘Get Writing!’ aspect of the Read, Write Inc.: Phonics programme. Our intention is that children in Year 2 have completed the Grey level of the Read, Write Inc.: Phonics (the highest level of completion) by the end of Term 2 in order to progress to our WRITE Sequence in Term 3.
Additional writing opportunities are provided to the children during lessons in Science, History or Geography. Following completion of RWI: Phonics, children will progress to our WRITE sequence of lessons.
Key Stage Two:
Throughout Key Stage 2, we teach writing through a text-based approach and follow the WRITE sequence to support and structure our extended pieces of writing. By following a text-based approach, allows us to meet the needs of the children that we are teaching – through choosing a text that will engage, inspire and motivate. This can include non-fiction as well as fiction and may also include stimuli from films, film or audio clips.
As well as reading a wide variety of genres, children are given frequent opportunities to develop their skills in writing in different genres. Through sharing at least one text per term in depth and by following our WRITE sequence, children are given the opportunity to put their writing skills into practice.
Our WRITE Sequence provides our children with a systematic approach to their written work that we aim will be transferred into life-long writing opportunities.
Our WRITE Sequence represents:
W | Work on words An opportunity to understand new vocabulary in context, to generate vocabulary of our own to suit a topic and to identify the etymology and morphology of new vocabulary. |
R | Read as a writer Opportunities to explore different examples of texts that we can then use as a model for our own writing. Developing our fluency, intonation and expression in our reading. Consider how an author has used punctuation or turn of phrase? How have they used different viewpoints or language to affect the reader? |
I | Investigate writing choices Pupils investigate punctuation and grammar skills, appropriate to their year group, and are given opportunities to identify, practice and consolidate grammatical understanding, whilst also being immersed in a text. Children then apply the grammar and punctuation skills that they have learnt in their extended pieces of writing. |
T | Try our individual choices Independent writing or as shared/guided writing pieces. Making authorial choices of our own to add to our writing and interest the reader. An opportunity to plan our writing and bring together our own individual thoughts towards a piece of written work. |
E | Edit & review Understanding that there will be meaningful and worthwhile changes to make to our writing and understanding the importance of reading our work to check for sense. We encourage independence in this skill are help the children develop strategies, for example, triple and try. We will also be referring to the Place Value of Punctuation & Grammar developed by Grammarsaurus as a strategy to check sentence structure to check for sense and ambiguity - making corrections where required. |
Children have opportunities to complete the WRITE sequence fully at least twice per term in English as well as one cycle that incorporates their Science or History or Georgraphy learning (see curriculum maps). Whilst lessons will mostly follow on sequentially by letter of the sequence, additional lessons maybe taught if a teacher feels their class needs further time on one aspect. For example, a teacher may decide to teach two ‘I’ lessons in a row as they have two different grammatical aspects that they wish to teach to their children. Our teachers also have the freedom to change the order of the lessons if required too. For example, teaching a 'Read as a Writer' lesson before, 'Work on Words.'
Our children will have at least one piece of published work per term in their books in which presentation/pride in their writing is the focus. Our class teachers may decide that they wish for their children to publish more often.
Love to Write
Children are provided opportunities to write for pleasure in their own ‘Love to Write’ books. Children can be supplied with stimuli or can make their own choices for written work. Written pieces in ‘Love to Write’ books are enjoyed by class teachers but not assessed. The children also have freedom to choose their own writing implements for these pieces which may include gel pens, biros and coloured felt pens.
Spelling
At Barming Primary, spelling is taught daily in focused sessions using the Read Write Inc Spelling Programme of study for children in years 2-6. Please click on the star icon for more information about Read Write Inc Spellings.
Learning to recognise the high frequency words on sight is crucial in developing fluency and accuracy in reading and then writing. High frequency words are the words that appear most often in printed materials. Some of the high frequency words are referred to as ‘tricky words’, as the children are unable to use their phonic knowledge to decode every part of the word. Once children are confident in reading and spelling high frequency words, they are taught spelling rules and are encouraged to apply these rules in their writing.
Impact
By the time children leave our school they will:
- Make good progress from their KS1 results and be thoughtful, articulate communicators both verbally and in written form.
- 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.