Writing

The purpose for teaching writing 

At Eastfield Primary School, the purpose of writing is to foster a lifelong love of the written word and English language. We aspire for all children to be authors; eager to craft writing for a variety of purposes. We nurture a culture for writing where children know writing is a means to input their voice into the world.  

The English skills of reading and oracy are intertwined into the writing curriculum. High-quality, engaging books and texts are chosen to introduce children to cultural diversities, develop empathy and promote curiosity, whilst providing writing opportunities for the children to explore the texts read and to further experiment with a variety of styles using the written word. 

 

 

The teaching and learning of writing 

Our children’s learning journey starts in pre-school and reception, where mark making is celebrated and evolves to letter formation, then into initial and end sounds before forming CVC words. Children are encouraged to write down their ideas in whatever form that takes.  

Our English curriculum is organised around our main topics or learning in each year group. Texts are carefully chosen to provide the progression in challenge, length and technical skills over each academic year and build well on prior learning. The purpose for writing varies depending on the age and stage of the children, the skills being taught and the particular needs of the cohort. 

Our writing lessons follow the same learning journey:
-First, we expose children to the book or text they will be reading, followed by an expert-written example of the genre being studied, for example an adventure narrative, interview, presentation or newspaper article (to name a few).
-The children then study this example, learning about its grammatical features, interesting or new vocabulary and they do a short fun quiz on the text to ensure understanding.
-After this, the experimentation stage of writing begins, where children learn the grammatical focus points in more detail and practise writing using them. For example, they may have learnt about adverbs, semi-colons or using parenthesis, so they then have an opportunity to practise writing sentences or paragraphs using these newly learnt skills.
-Then begins the application phase, where the children plan, write and edit their writing.
-To end, the children accomplish their intended purpose for writing, this may be entertaining a different year group with their writing, persuading an external company or informing each other with presentations. 

Whilst our writing outcomes incorporate many reading skills, explicit teaching of reading comes through daily phonics and reading sessions in EYFS and KS1 and Guided Reading sessions in KS2. 

 

Spellings

All children in years 1-6 have a weekly spelling test and receive a list of  10 spellings to practise at home each week. In year 1 these spellings will directly correspond with the GPC’s (Letters and sounds) they children have been learning in that weeks phonics lessons. This is to help them to consolidate and apply their learning.

From years 2 -6, spellings are taught as word families, by exploring the impact of suffixes and prefixes on a root word, and learning strategies such as mnemonics to remember silent letters and trickier spellings. Our weekly spelling lists are a combination of spelling patterns/ word families, prefixes and suffixes, topic specific vocabulary or words from the statutory spelling lists, which don’t always follow specific spelling rules. Statutory spelling lists can be found below.

For KS1 ‘Little Wandle’ is used for the spelling lessons and lists. For KS2, ‘EdShed’ is used for the spelling lessons, lists and for children to engage with spellings in a fun way at home.
We recognise that good spelling is crucial to being a great writer and thank you for supporting your child to develop their reading and writing skills by supporting them to learn their spellings each week.

In years 2 and 6,  pupils will sit a statutory 20 word spelling test as part of their end of Key Stage assessments.  Example copies of these tests can be found below:

End of Key Stage 1 (Year 2 ) Statutory spelling test example

End of Key Stage 2 (Year 6 ) Statutory spelling test example

Handwriting

At Eastfield, we recognise the importance of neat, legible and speedy handwriting as a basic skill that goes beyond primary education. We are very proud of our pupil’s handwriting and take particular care in our cursive handwriting style. Throughout the school setting, we use Letter-join’s on-line handwriting resource as the basis of our handwriting policy.

From EYFS, pupils are taught to form letters that are the correct shape and size. In year one, pupils will continue their letter formation journey. Once they have mastered forming each letter  we will begin to introduce a pre-cursive style where each letter starts from the line. As pupils enter year 2, pupils will be encouraged to use a pre-cursive or cursive style depending on their pencil control and writing fluency. In Key Stage1, handwriting is taught through explicit, short mini lessons focussing or one letter or join at a time.

As pupils transition into Key Stage 2, pupils practise and refine their cursive handwriting style until it becomes an automatic process that does not interfere with their creative thinking. By the end of their time at Eastfield, pupils will understand the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.

Pupils who consistently demonstrate a neat, legible cursive handwriting style will be award a Pen Licence and handwriting pen to record their work.

To ensure our pupils get frequent opportunities to practise, online handwriting practise is available to all children via the Letter-join online platform.

Letter -Join home log-in information

Writing for pleasure

Pupils at Eastfield are provided with many experiences that enrich their learning in English.

During our daily ‘Guided Reading’ sessions, the Thursday session is dedicated to a ‘free-write’ session for the children. This is followed with each class celebrating writing through the ‘author’s chair’, in which any child can choose to read the writing to the class. This creates a culture of children who all see themselves as an author who love to write and have things to say.

Throughout the year, whole-school competitions are launched to encourage writing for pleasure for all the children to share their writing. Competitions are launched termly or half-termly and may be centered around a theme such as Christmas, Harvest Festival or Halloween , or the competitions may be to submit a mini joke-book or to write about a short video clip. These are non-prescriptive and for the sole-purpose of spreading a love of writing. Every child who submits a piece of writing is entered into a random prize draw where they win a notebook and pen to continue their super writing.

The outcomes of our writing curriculum 

By the time pupils leave Eastfield, they will have written for a variety of purposes, enabling them to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through written work; applying the necessary grammar and vocabulary for their written purpose. 

Continued Professional Development  

We understand and value the need for continued professional development within our teaching team and to support the development of writing. We regularly monitor the teaching of writing and deliver both bespoke and general feedback to aid development. We have staff meeting which are dedicated to writing, where a specific part of the learning journey is chosen to be focussed on. We then learn about recent research in that area and do ‘live modelling’ of success in this area.  

Subject policies and documents:

Writing Progression Preschool Year 6

Subject Leader:

Miss J Scroby