Intent
At Stannington First School we endeavour to create a love for literacy. We want every child to leave our school with the skills of an excellent writer who:
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Has the ability to write with fluency and has an author’s voice;
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Can think about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and know how they will achieve this;
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Has a sophisticated bank of vocabulary and an excellent knowledge of writing techniques to extend details or description;
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Can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures;
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Displays excellent transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated, spelled correctly and neat;
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Re-reads, edits and improves their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability and better than the last.
Throughout their time at Stannington First School, children develop their skills by exploring a whole range of different genres, with a focus on exploring a range of models of excellence and using these to guide the drafting and editing process. It is important to note that we not only develop a real enjoyment of writing in English lessons but in all subjects across the curriculum. We expect the highest standards of writing every time a child writes in any subject.
Implementation
At Stannington First School we have adopted the Power of Reading approach (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education CLPE) to ensure that quality children’s literature and proven creative teaching approaches are used to support teachers and children in the literacy curriculum and develop a whole school love of reading and writing.
A well-chosen text provides rich language models and structures from which children can learn how writing works and the effect it can have on a reader. We aim to have confident young writers by using this programme to support reading aloud and sharing high quality texts across a range of genres, reflecting a range of writing styles. We choose texts that are rich in vocabulary and enable children to comprehend beyond their own reading fluency level.
Our school creates a rich reading environment that demonstrates the written word in all its forms and shares how writing can be used for thinking, for communication and as a means of expression. With a rich diet of quality texts and enriching experiences children will be able to find their own reasons to write and develop a style that fits the purpose, audience and form intended.
Our writing sequence has three phases:
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Phase one – immersion in the text
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Phase two – generate ideas, plan and write
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Phrase three – proof reading and redrafting
In addition, there is a spelling focus each week practised during the daily Spelling Bee. These sessions focus on spelling rules and are done so in practical ways. At the end of the week the children take part in a whole class Spelling Bee competition. We believe that this helps our children to learn their spellings and develop their resilience when faced with challenge.
We also plan educational visits or arrange visiting experts who will stimulate and focus creative writing experiences.
Impact
Our Writing curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
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A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes
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Children can understand and apply the fundamental principles of spelling grammar and punctuation in their writing
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Children can evaluate, improve and redraft their writing
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Children are responsible, competent, confident and creative writers
CLPE Writing in Primary Schools - What We Know Works
This publication shares what we know about writing in primary schools. This is part of our free 'What We Know Works' series which brings together the research we have gathered from teachers working with us on our classroom based research projects.
You can access this research using the link below - just click on the picture