Writing
At Swanland School, we aim to create, nurture and develop confident independent writers. Through the sharing of high-quality texts, short stories and novels, developing reading and phonics, the teaching of spelling patterns and rules and creating opportunities for writing for real purposes, we are able to develop great writers who are able to compose, edit and improve their writing.
Intent
At Swanland Primary School our intent for the teaching of writing are that all children will be confident, expressive and skill full writers by the time they finish the Swanland School Curriculum.
The skills we teach them are to:
- understand the importance of audience and purpose;
- develop strategies to communicate effectively through the written word;
- write in a variety of styles and genres;
- use their developing creativity, imagination and inventiveness;
- recognise that writing can be a collaborative effort;
- recognise that drafting and redrafting is an essential part of the writing process;
- recognise that spelling is an important skill and ensure that children have a range of strategies to move towards the conventions of the written word;
- use grammar and punctuation accurately;
- produce effective, well presented written work using fluent and legible handwriting;
- be able to communicate ideas through the use of ICT.
Implementation
To support our teaching of writing, staff refer to the Talk for Writing strategy and our programme of study . Teachers are flexible in their approach so that it suits the needs of the children and text type being taught.
Children are given firm foundations through the use of high quality texts and real life experiences to base their writing on. A wide range of text types and genres are covered across the school where the focus is on the purpose and the audience we are writing for as well as the key features of that text type. Classes have a class book on which many aspects of writing can be linked including fiction and non-fiction focuses for example when teaching Kensuke’s Kingdom, children write stories as well as letters, diaries and story blurbs. Writing can also be linked to the topic being taught at that time e.g. letters to historical figures or discussions based around a topic being taught.
The Talk for Writing Approach
The Talk for Writing Approach is used when planning many units of work. Not all elements will be used in every unit of planning and teachers make judgements on where these fit best for the children and the unit being planned. ]
Below are the key principles of this approach:
- Cold Write ( baseline assessment)
- Imitation and Immersion
- Innovation
- Independent Application
In the younger years there will be a stronger focus on the early stage of these steps (Imitation) and as they move on into the later years there will be a greater emphasis on Innovation and Independent application. A breakdown of the expectations for each stage are detailed below.
Cold Write or Baseline assessment
This is done at least a week before the new unit starts and is used as a tool to assess children’s skills and knowledge before planning.
Imitation and Immersion
Warm up Games- are introduced to get the children to embed words and phrases that may be used, to practice grammar and punctuation skills and collect or ‘magpie’ good language. This will be based on the identified targets from the cold write.
Internalise the text- Teachers along with the children will read a high quality example of the text type, they will internalise this in a range of ways such as drama, creating a text maps to help them retell the story or piece of writing and become more confident with the text. They will pick out good language skills and deepen their understanding of the text through comprehension activities. They will learn and perform the text (or part of the text) until they have internalised the language patterns.
Boxing up- They will box up the text as a class. Boxing up is a method of splitting the text up into its key features. As the children get older, this will become more detailed. This enables the children to identify the key features of the text type they are reading and will later be writing. This can be done for more than one text of its type to compare common features and analyse them.
Create a toolkit- the class will then create a toolkit of essential features for the text type
Innovation
Games- During this stage, children will continue to use games and short activities to practice relevant skills, vocabulary or key areas of learning.
Box up own ideas- As a whole class shared activity, children will use a boxing up grid or similar to plan their ideas based on the original with some changes. Children will also learn to create their own text maps or to talk through the text.
Modelled and shared writing- It is critical that teachers model writing with the children in order that the children can see how a piece of writing is put together. They will model a piece of writing, encouraging children to provide ideas. The teacher will constantly check for flow and read aloud as they write to demonstrate the process of writing.
Write own version- Children will write a version of their own based on the original or part of the original using the shared ideas. Guided writing is used to support children and peer and self-assessment is used to help edit and redraft ideas.
Editing and Improving- Children are asked to self and peer-assess their writing. This process is demonstrated by the teacher.
Independent Application (Hot Write)
Children are then supported to decide what their theme will be when writing and where they will gather their content from. They will use a familiar boxing up plan for another theme based on the same structure. Children will be asked to self and peer-assess their writing.
Genre Coverage
A wider range of text types and genres are shared with the children and coverage is repeated across the years (Appendix B).
Approaches to the teaching of Grammar and Punctuation
The teaching of Grammar and Punctuation is in line with the requirements of The National Curriculum 2014 and as detailed in Appendix A for our school’s programme of study. Grammar and Punctuation skills will be taught and introduced in discrete lessons but it is also essential that these skills are always taught in the context of writing for real purposes and so children are always given the opportunity to use these skills in writing tasks. Children are given daily opportunities to practice these skill in short ‘warm up’ activities and through application across the curriculum.
Each week the planning will detail a focused area for the teaching of a specific skill in grammar or punctuation with planned opportunities for children to embed this in their writing.
Application across the curriculum
Opportunities should then be given to apply these skills across the curriculum.
Impact
Writing is assessed on an ongoing basis using the writing target cards or the end of Key Stage Expectation grids for Year 2 and 6. Writing is only assessed when the task has been independently undertaken in the cold and hot write sessions. The assessment will be done before any marking is done, though children may be given the chance to peer and self-assess and redraft and edit. Every item on the criteria sheet does not need to be seen in one piece of work. Grammar and Punctuation is assessed through the writing but also is assessed in KS2 by termly tests to monitor progress.
Spelling
Intent
At Swanland Primary School our aims for the teaching of spelling are that all children will:
- recognise that spelling is an important skill;
- have a range of strategies to move towards the conventions of the written word;
- become confident in their spelling skills and become independent spellers;
- be able to spell a variety of patterns and words accurately;
- have a range of spelling strategies and an understanding of spelling rules.
Implementation
Spelling is taught discretely on a weekly basis throughout the school. Objectives are taken from the National Curriculum as detailed in Appendix D of the NC document. Games, songs, rhymes and challenges are used in order to make the learning of spelling rules and patterns more interesting. Any mistakes made on age appropriate spellings are underlined and children are asked to attempt to correct this word either through the use of a dictionary, computer or spelling app. Children in Key Stage Two are given spelling words to learn each week which are taken from a combination of the Year group spelling lists from the National Curriculum Appendix E and from mistakes made in their own work. Key Stage Two children practise their spellings every morning by using the Look- Say- Cover–Write-Check method. Staff refer to Babcock’s No Nonsense Spelling to support the teaching of spelling.
Impact
Spelling will be assessed termly using a diagnostic spelling test and grammar and punctuation is assessed both through independent writing and formally on a termly basis using the Rising Stars assessments. Year 6 will use past SATs papers to assess.