Developing Young Writers

We recognise that writing is one of the most fundamental skills that we can teach our pupils which supports their entire learning journey. Successful writers explore and present their learning from the rest of the curriculum more effectively and cohesively. We dedicate significant teaching time to writing and the approach we use, ensures children have access to storytelling, literature and opportunities to talk and widen their vocabulary.

Structured progression in knowledge from the teaching of phonetic spelling and handwriting to sentence construction and knowledge of genre characteristics are all carefully planned. We have researched, tried, tested and adapted our approaches to best suit the children of Penponds.

We teach children the purpose of writing and the importance of these lifelong skills using well-conceived and engaging English outcomes in the classroom. We connect our English teaching with the wider curriculum to strengthen pupil memory. To improve reduced speech and language skills in the community, we spend time modelling, directly teaching and rehearsing vocabulary and word meaning.

We use a ‘Talk for Writing’ approach to support our pupils to learn to write in a creative and imaginative way without losing the emphasis on accurate writing. This approach supports children to become confident writers who can express their thoughts and ideas accurately through a range of genres for a variety of different purposes. We also teach them how to present their writing clearly, neatly and precisely for different audiences. We dedicate, specific time to teaching proof-reading, editing and redrafting through the learning sequence.

The Writing Lead is responsible for supporting colleagues in their teaching, keeping them informed of current developments in the subject, and by providing a strategic lead and direction for Writing.

Our children are supported through our four school values – Curiosity, Creativity, Confidence and Caring- all embodied through our vision, ‘Aiming High and Achieving Our Best’ and our vision statement:

Penponds School will work with all stakeholders to create a happy, safe and stimulating environment where children become ‘Leaders of their own Learning’. By maintaining high expectations of the whole school community, our children will be equipped to become lifelong learners. We encourage curiosity about the world, strive to be creative in everything we do and build confidence in our children to enable them to grasp opportunities and tackle challenges with resilience and self-assurance.

Agreed Teaching principles for Writing

• Expanded vocabulary leads to better academic outcomes
• Fiction is best taught when based on a quality model text
• Non-fiction text models should be real, things children can / have experienced
• Shared writing underpins the teaching of the writing process
• Learning and retelling a story helps their own composition and memory of vocab

Teaching Approaches for Writing

• Talk for Writing (shared writing underpins the teaching process)
• Read, Write Inc Phonics (systematic teaching of reading, spelling and handwriting)
• Letter-join supports joined handwriting
• Dictation for developing writers (developing the basics in sentence construction)
• Helicopter Stories (creating imaginative, young storytellers)

How do we measure the impact?

• Toolkits support day to day formative assessment
• Peer and self-assessment supports improvements
• Edit/redraft days between writing days
• Celebrating handwriting using Pen Licences and Posh Pencils
• MAT wide Writing Moderation
• Celebrating published writing tasks into purposeful outcomes