Writing
Intent
In Writing, the intent of our curriculum is first and foremost to help children feel that they are writers and to develop a life-long love of writing. We focus on the skills, knowledge and understanding that our children need to become confident at transcription, composition and spelling. This is linked closely to our Christian values of creativity and perseverance and ‘letting our light shine’. We want our children to appreciate all forms of writing from, fiction, non-fiction and poetry from a wide range of model texts.
The aims of our Writing Curriculum follow that of the National Curriculum, ensuring all children have access to the skills of handwriting, spelling and grammar. High expectations are set for all learners regardless of their background or skill level.
Implementation
The Writing Curriculum is designed so that taught knowledge and skills are built upon each week, term and year, using a bank of high quality model texts. Our children are proactive in each writing lesson, identifying how their previous learning can be used to build up a bank of skills. Concepts are further strengthened and developed through multi-skills approach in which the children have the opportunity to express themselves through drama, games, talking and writing. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex texts and building up their knowledge of grammar contextually.
We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary. In addition, we strengthen the children's sentence structure knowledge with daily activities.
Writing is timetabled as a daily session to ensure consistency and progression and opportunities for publishing and performing writing is woven into curriculum time.
Impact
Children are an active part of assessing their own learning, through regular feedback in lessons and through the self and peer assessing of writing in line with targets given at the beginning of each writing unit At the end of each unit, teachers assess children’s progress against the objectives of the National Curriculum through formative and summative assessment; these assessments build an ongoing picture of each child’s overall writing journey as they move from year group to year group, to ensure they are ready for the next stage of their learning. Pupils will leave our school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to appreciate and enjoy writing throughout their lives.
If you would like any further information about our curriculum, please contact the school office.