English - Writing

Please click icon above for the Writing Curriculum Progression document.

Intent

At Five Ways Primary School, we aim for all pupils to develop writing skills that will enable them to produce written work that is suitable for its purpose and has consideration for its intended audience. We aim for the children’s written work to be clear with a cohesive style. Children will be taught to understand a range of writing purposes and will be able to write these with the correct features. Our curriculum intends to provide an understanding of how writing skills are applied within and across subjects and how these same skills are relevant to their own future. Through regular parents’ meetings and inviting parents to attend workshops in school, we hope to build a wider school family, who are better equipped to support children at home. Having a shared staff understanding is essential to our success – this enables us to develop a consistent approach, which prevents any lapse of progression.

Implementation

Our earliest writers, through Success for All Fischer Family Trust, are supported in the beginnings of writing transcription by building their first, simple sentences with the phonic knowledge, that they have been taught. At Five Ways Primary School, we strongly believe that children should be taught to decode and encode in parallel. Through daily, systematic and consistent high-quality phonics teaching, children learn to blend and segment words for reading and transcription. Children are taught letter formation, pencil grip and a good handwriting and seating position throughout EYFS and into KS1, daily. Our handwriting progression supports children at all stages of their handwriting journey, through to KS2.

Beyond Success for All Fischer Family Trust, children build on a basis of reading and SPAG skills, to support and produce a final piece of extended writing. Through following the National Curriculum and selecting high quality text and stimuli, we deliver a sequential writing journey for children to provide context and ideas for writing; to analyse genre features, undertaking SPaG practise and eventually drafting, editing and publishing a final piece of independent work.

At Five Ways Primary School, we pride ourselves in creating a language rich environment, exposing children to adventurous and ambitious vocabulary. We encourage children to magpie words and phrases, to seek clarification, in order to enhance their understanding of language. Our ultimate goal is for children to have a rich vocabulary which they are confident to use and apply within their independent writing. Building up to each independent piece, staff model effective writing strategies and showcase high-quality examples of age-expected writing. This approach allows children to practise all of the skills they need for each piece of writing they produce. We firmly believe in the importance of applying writing skills across the curriculum. Therefore, opportunities for extended writing are also carefully woven into other subjects through golden threads, to ensure a variety of authentic writing experiences.

Spellings overviews from KS1 through to UKS2, ensure a healthy progression of transcription acquisition, which is monitored regularly through the children’s writing and regular assessments. 

To monitor implementation of our writing provision, regular learning walks, book scrutinies and various moderations take place in year groups, cross-phase and across the whole school, to ensure a broad spectrum is covered and judgements are agreed.