English – Writing

Intent

Writing is an integral part of our curriculum and all children from Foundation Stage to Year 2 are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum in a variety of ways. Early writing is encouraged through mark making opportunities in EYFS, both indoors and outdoors, and each EYFS classroom has a designated writing areas where this enthusiasm for writing can be encouraged. We ensure that all children are exposed to high quality, engaging texts and use these to teach writing across a broad range of genres. 

We are inclusive of all children, including SEND by providing the appropriate scaffolding, support and writing tools those children need in their writing process to experience success.  

We have high expectations and nurture a culture where children are encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing. All children are challenged and encouraged to take risks and view mistakes as a positive part of the learning process. 

The aims of our writing curriculum are to: 

• Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers. 
• Nurture a love of writing by providing exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage all pupils and enhance their desire to write. 
• Ensure children acquire a wide vocabulary. 
• Equip children with the phonic skills to tackle spellings of new and known words by effectively applying the spelling patterns that they have learnt 
• Provide children with a solid understanding of grammar and apply it effectively to their writing. 
• Equip children with the skills needed to be able to orally rehearse, plan, compose, revise and evaluate their writing. We want our children to develop into confident, able writers who see the value of, and find pleasure in, the writing process. 
• Encourage each child to reach their full potential so that they write clearly, coherently and with flair, and in Year 2 adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. 
• Encourage children to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, cursive handwriting style by the time they move to junior school 

Implementation

At Abbots Farm Infant School, we believe that writing should be a creative/developmental process both at a functional and an imaginative level. All attempts at writing are valued and we know that all children have potential to be successful writers. Transcriptional skills are taught alongside the creative aspects. Immersion in reading, talk and preparation for writing is essential to the writing development process. 

To ensure children develop a love of writing and the skills needed to be an effective writer we: 

• immerse children in high-quality texts.  We strongly believe that reading and writing are inextricably linked therefor a stimulating high-quality text at the beginning of each writing unit encourages children to make links and become empathetic, confident and ambitious writers.   
• use a range of exciting stimuli including film clips, artefacts, visitors and meaningful real-life and first-hand experiences which we hope will excite the children and give them a desire to write  
• ensure children write for a real purpose and reason 
• model the writing process to support children’s writing and make expectations clear 
• provide children with opportunities to develop a rich vocabulary to bring their own writing to life – we introduce them to three Tier 2 vocabulary words weekly 
• teach Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar and Phonics explicitly  
• encourage children use and apply their phonic knowledge in their writing 
• teach the children how to proof-read and check their writing makes sense and then, in Year 2, how to make revisions and additions so they can improve their writing 
• use a rigorous, sequential approach to teaching handwriting using a scheme called Letter-join 
• ensure children who have gaps in their knowledge receive appropriate support and intervention 

Impact

The main intended impact of our delivery of Writing is that all pupils enjoy writing across a range of genres, can write for a range of purposes and audiences, and become confident and effective communicators, making good progress from their own personal starting points. We aim for all children to have the writing skills and writing stamina needed for the next stage of their education. Children will develop a varied vocabulary that they can use across the curriculum and can apply spelling rules and grammatical concepts in their work. We also aim to ensure that our children are proud of their writing and enjoy the process. 

Our Writing Curriculum is progressive and builds on and embeds key skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and transcriptional skills and on acquiring new vocabulary.    

 We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:  

• Discussions with children about their learning (pupil voice). 
• Coaching with teacher focusing on children’s work in books and photo evidence and images of the children’s writing elsewhere (particularly in EYFS). 
• Coaching with teachers focusing on planning to ensure that all classes have a consistent coverage of the curriculum. 
• Coaching with teachers in lessons to continuously improve our teaching of the writing curriculum. 
• All coaching provides opportunities for professional dialogue between teachers and writing lead which is reflective. 
• Progress is measured through regular teacher assessments. Assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning process and it takes place in an ongoing capacity. This generates constructive marking with ‘next steps’ where appropriate. These next steps ensure that children know exactly what they need to do next to make progress in their writing and children are encouraged to respond to this in red pen.  
• Termly formative assessment grids are used to assess attainment and progress.  Judgements are made against statements on the planning grips.  Emerging, expected, exceeding indicators are used to ensure consistency of assessment across all year groups. This allows for data analysis to identify any gaps of knowledge or skills. This can then be identified for teacher’s future planning. 

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