Intent
At Stretton Handley CE Primary School, our writing curriculum is designed to provide children with the skills necessary to speak, read and write fluently, enabling them to communicate their ideas to others effectively across all aspects of the curriculum. We will achieve this by ensuring that key skills and vocabulary are reinforced. Key reading strands are deliberately constructed so our children’s word reading (including phonics), comprehension skills and knowledge are used within their writing. Our children will be immersed in a variety of writing experiences,
opportunities and they will write in meaningful contexts that are aimed at promoting pride, confidence and enjoyment in writing across the curriculum.
Implementation
Writing at Stretton Handley CE Primary School is taught and celebrated in a range of ways, and is taught daily across the school and across a range of subjects through quality key texts. We aim, wherever possible, to create cross-curricular writing opportunities, as we believe that in order for children to see themselves as successful writers they need to be involved in writing for a purpose. The National Curriculum (2014) ensures that a range of genres are covered, including narrative (e.g. extended stories, stories by the same author, myths and legends, adventure stories and traditional stories), non-fiction (e.g. persuasive texts, non-chronological reports, information texts, recounts, 8 reports and letters) and poetry (e.g. rhyme, nonsense rhymes, shape poems, acrostic and descriptive poetry).
Genres are taught and learnt considering the:
- purpose
- form
- audience
Throughout each unit, the links between reading and writing are made explicit – we read as writers and we write as readers. The progress throughout each unit of work shows the transition between reading as writers (focusing on structure, characterisation, and language features etc…) to writing as readers (word play, describing, composition, planning, editing, revising etc…). Integral to the process of writing is speaking and listening. ‘Talk for writing’ is essential to enable children to articulate their thoughts, retell stories, orally create new stories and orally rehearse what they are going to write and re-read what they have written. This underlines and runs alongside the writing process.
At Stretton Handley CE Primary School, we aim to develop handwriting through systematic and regular practice and teaching. The use of our agreed script ensures a consistency of style and approach, which leads to an effective teaching.
Impact
Through our broad and balanced teaching of writing across the school we aim for our children to leave us as competent and confident writers, whom are authors in their own right.
Attainment in writing is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of KS1 and KS2. These results are measured against the writing attainment nationally. Because we
believe that writing is vital for success in life our writing curriculum goes beyond the results of these statutory assessments. We wish to ensure that our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond primary school and equipped for their entire educational journey. All staff work
hard to ensure that children are able to produce written work in other areas of the curriculum that is the same quality as the writing produced in English lessons.