Writing
Intent
At Higher Lane Primary School, we believe that writing is a key skill for life both inside and out of education and that is why it features across all the subjects taught across our school. Our aim is to provide children with key transferrable writing skills to build on year on year, that can be used throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for secondary school and beyond. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling.
We believe that a quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. We expect that pupils take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately, and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. We inspire pupils to write with a clear audience and purpose shared, linked to a core text. We aim for all pupils to use discussion to communicate effectively, articulating their ideas whilst challenging and expanding on the ideas of others.
Implementation
In order to help us to develop confident, enthusiastic writers who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and across a variety of contexts, our teaching of writing is cross-curricular and linked to our class topics. This provides our children with regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Writing tasks are specific and meaningful, and meet a purpose to engage children and to illustrate how their writing skills can be applied to real life contexts. We use wow moments, trips and visitors who will stimulate and focus creative writing experiences. We have a rigorous and well-organised English curriculum and framework, that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion; high-quality texts and a vocabulary-rich environment are the foundations of this. Teachers ensure that links are made throughout their daily practice and pupils have the opportunity to ‘orally rehearse’ and review prior learning and build on what they already know.
Our writing curriculum uses some elements of Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ which we have adapted to fit our bespoke and challenging writing curriculum. We have developed our own writing roadmap which we use from Y1-Y6, ensuring consistency in approach across the school, as well as ensuring prior learning acts as building blocks for each session. Children are given opportunities to plan, draft, write at length and edit and improve. Teachers model high-quality writing and have high expectations of the writing every child can produce. Learning Challenge lessons inspire the children with a clear purpose for their writing and ensures that they have the knowledge to put pencil to paper.
Vocabulary acquisition in all lessons, particularly in Learning Challenge and Reading, provides children with a wealth of appropriate vocabulary to use in their writing.
Impact
Pupils will make good progress from their own personal starting points and become competent, confident and creative writer’s. Our children will develop competency in transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing), as well as being able to effectively edit and improve their writing, at national expectation and at greater depth. They will be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Our pupils will acquire a wide vocabulary and have a strong command of the written word. Most importantly, they will develop a love of writing and be well equipped for the rest of their education.