Writing

Writing

Intent

St Patrick’s CE Primary School recognises the importance of children writing for pleasure and for information. We inspire the pupils to take pride in their writing, to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. We aim for every child to develop a fluent, legible and coherent writing style. At our school, we provide a broad and balanced literacy curriculum, which encompasses the two core competencies of writing – transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (structuring and articulating ideas) – as set out in the National Curriculum (2014) guidelines, so they are able to communicate and structure their ideas in a correct and coherent manner. 

The pupils at St. Patrick’s CE Primary School will:

• Choose to write for pleasure
• Understand that writing is an essential skill for everyday life
• Write in creative and imaginative ways
• Write independently
• Enjoy discovering new vocabulary
• Experience a range of purposes and forms of writing
• Communicate by writing clearly, confidently and appropriately, demonstrating an awareness of a variety of purposes and audiences
• Be inspired by a broad and balanced cross curricular curriculum with Literacy at the centre
• Have a legible handwriting style developing to a fluent joined handwriting style
• Confidently segment words and have strategies to remember tricky words
• Present their writing to a high standard  and develop the stages of the writing process: planning, drafting, editing and re-editing

Implementation

Writing is taught using high quality, challenging texts. We use resources from writing initiatives, such as the Power of Reading teaching sequences from the CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education).The children are immersed in engaging narrative or non-fiction texts over several weeks, exploring characters, settings, storylines and themes. We believe that children’s learning is enhanced when they are writing for a purpose and units are planned so children understand the skills, format and language needed to write to entertain, persuade or inform. The writing skills developed in these lessons are carefully selected to allow for skills progression appropriate to the stage of learning.

The teaching of these skills takes place very day. Within English lessons, teachers use the chosen text to analyse and model positive writing techniques through a variety of activities, challenges, drama strategies and discussions. Grammar is taught within these lessons, carefully embedded in the units so that children learn the correct use of grammar while engaged in the class book. The children adopt these literacy skills and gradually learn to apply them in fun and exciting ways to write fluently and with growing confidence.

What can you do at home to help?

The Power of Reading begins and ends with enjoying stories and reading books. We encourage all parents to read with their children every day whatever their age or ability. Children who are read to regularly before coming to school have a much wider range of vocabulary to communicate confidently. 

Children who read for pleasure are also more likely to succeed as writers because of the way in which reading develops language development.

Here are some websites to support your child:

Handwriting

At St. Patrick’s CE Primary School, we encourage children to develop a neat, coherent, comfortable handwriting style. Pupils will be expected to develop fluent, legible and eventually, speedy handwriting. In the Early Years, gross motor and fine motor development is an important part of the curriculum each day. The Letterjoin scheme is used to teach printed, pre-cursive and cursive styles of handwriting.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

If children are to develop as competent readers and writers, it is vitally important that they have a secure understanding of the spelling, punctuation and grammar system of the English language.

The national curriculum guidance for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Understand the vocabulary they need to discuss their reading, writing and spoken language.
• Learn the correct grammatical terms in English and that these terms are integrated within their work.
• Are able to read and spell with accuracy and confidence, the statutory words lists from their applicable year group.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar is embedded in daily English lessons as well as taught in discrete sessions. Pupils are given the opportunity to use and apply skills within their written work to enable them to express themselves clearly, accurately and effectively. Pupils in Year 2 and Key Stage 2 follow Read Write Inc Spelling to ensure progression and consistency in learning to spell.