Writing

Intent

At Weedon Bec Primary School, we believe that English is the key to education and to life-long learning. The skills children learn in English will enable them to communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. Our aim is that children learn to read, write and speak with confidence. We want our pupils to acquire stamina, broad vocabulary, an understanding of structure and a solid understanding of grammar. They should also be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school. We want them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style across a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a fluent, joined, handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we strive for our children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process. We understand the importance of parents and carers supporting their children and we encourage adult support with spelling practice.

Within our lessons, we aim for the teaching to engage, inspire and promote curiosity and develop our pupils' confidence to explore styles of writing and different genres. We strive for our children to be resilient writers that show perseverance. Our lessons will model and scaffold the skill they are developing and provide opportunities for them to practise and apply these skills. Our ambitious aspirations for learning across the school are coherently planned and sequenced in our Writing Progression map, highlighting the skills that children will learn and revisit each term.

Implementation

In the Early Years, mark making resources are always readily available, from smaller utensils to chunky chalks. We encourage big and small movements through play, to strengthen our bodies and use the kinetic movements to support creating strong cores. Our provision also provides opportunities to use fine motor skills for example threading, using tweezers, dropping water with pipettes, alongside cutting opportunities and junk modelling for larger work.

We ensure there are examples of print available within the environment, such as labels and registers and enhance the provision by adding in meaningful early writing opportunities – shopping lists, medication forms etc.

In pre-school, children begin to learn to write their name and this is continued into Reception using name cards to practise correct letter order and formation. This is also taught through RWInc, which begins in the Summer Term in pre-school.

Stories are used to promote new vocabulary and begin to build a world of imagination.

Progressing into Reception, there is a sharp focus on ensuring that children acquire a wide vocabulary, communicate effectively and secure a knowledge of phonics, which gives them the foundations for future learning, especially in preparation for them to become confident and fluent readers. Phonics, reading and writing thread through everything. We promote articulate conversations, storytelling, books for joy and writing for a purpose. Kinetic letter movements and Real PE were introduced in September 2022 to develop core strength and fine motor control to support strong bodies and correct pencil grip. RWInc rhymes are used to form letters correctly by the end of the academic year. Through Drawing Club there is a focus on vocabulary, understanding character/setting/wonder (imaginative element) and encouraging maths, mark making and making conversation. Continuous provision ensures there is access to writing materials to encourage mark making.

All children take part in 4 writing sessions a week, which is supplemented with writing opportunities across the curriculum and an additional, discrete grammar lesson in years 5 and 6. At Weedon, we have adopted Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’, using a clear and systematic approach to the teaching of writing. This starts in Year 1 and continues to Year 6. This step-by-step framework builds pupils’ confidence using a method known as ‘sentence stacking’. Using high-quality modelling, sentences are stacked together chronologically and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can immediately apply to their own writing. An individual lesson is broken down into three learning chunks, made up of three sections:

Initiate - a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
Model - the teacher models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
Enable - the children write their sentences following the model.

This approach builds the children’s confidence with sentence structure, an understanding of a ‘whole’ piece of writing, how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing and the organisation of their ideas. This ensures children have a clear view of what structures and high-quality writing looks like and how to improve their own writing.

Throughout their time at Weedon, our children are exposed to a range of genres. Our long-term plan has been mapped out to provide opportunities for the children to build on knowledge and skills and ensure that a variety of genres are progressively taught.

Presentation is very important to us. We use a cursive approach to handwriting, where children learn to develop a legible, fluent and comfortable style. This is taught from Year 2, once their letter formation is well embedded using the Read Write Inc handwriting to match their phonics knowledge and letter knowledge.

We follow a progressive spelling programme called Spelling Shed, building on the phonics knowledge and skills. In KS1 and KS2 Children explore spelling patterns and rules, carrying out investigations and revision activities. From Year 2, children are also taught to use dictionaries and in KS2 they also use thesauruses to support their spelling and editing skills.

Impact

Pupils across the school are proud of the writing they produce and enjoy reading it aloud and sharing with both peers and adults. Our pupils enjoy writing across a range of genres and all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be thoroughly modelled and appropriately scaffolded. Pupils will develop a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing. Our children will leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught. The impact is monitored half termly through individual pupil writing assessments, which provide the children with an opportunity to showcase their prior learning and that of the unit completed. This data and information is then reported to writing leads and termly data is analysed and reported to governors. All teachers have received the Jane Considine ‘The Write Stuff’ online training, which is readily available for all staff to access. When specific areas are highlighted from the monitoring of teaching and book looks, teachers can be directed to training that suits their needs.

2024:

On completion of the first year implementing Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ approach, the early impact we have identified from independent writing pieces so far is:

A growing confidence and enthusiasm for writing across the school identified in both children and teaching staff.

Children know what to write due to the thorough models within lessons and communal vocabulary collection.

Children’s vocabulary is expanding and they know how to broaden their vocabulary.

The quantity of independent writing is growing, increasing the children’s stamina for writing.

Across the school, children are more familiar with the structure of a variety of genres and text types.

From our most recent data analysis, it is clear that the changes we have implemented have made a positive impact on the amount of children achieving ARE and making accelerated progress to help close the identified gaps in their learning.