The National Curriculum states that pupils should:
- Develop the stamina and skills to write at length
- Use accurate spelling and punctuation
- Be grammatically correct
- Write in a range of ways and purposes including narratives, explanations, descriptions, comparisons, summaries and evaluations
- Write to support their understanding and consolidation of what they have heard or read
The 2014 Curriculum divides writing skills into two dimensions:
- Transcription (spelling and handwriting)
- Composition (articulating ideas in speech and writing)
We recognise that both these elements are essential to success and we support the acquisition of both sets of skills through various methods. We recognise that these areas are clearly linked to the other aspects of English learning: speaking and listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary. In Early Years, pupils learn about the different purposes of writing when teachers/adults model writing in a variety of contexts and then practising these skills themselves.
In all year groups, we teach writing through high-quality texts and experiences such as: picture books, novels, poetry and immersive real-life experiences during school trips. During their time at the school, children will write a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, including recounts, news reports, explanation texts, poems, plays and various forms of narrative.
Throughout Early Years and Key Stage One, children are taught the key principles of writing in order to lay a solid foundation for developing their skills later on. These skills are mapped progressively through our writing curriculum, to ensure children are secure with the foundational knowledge required, to be a proficient writer. Through the Read Write Inc Programme, an emphasis is placed on developing clear handwriting with ‘finger spaces’ between in each word and children are taught to apply their knowledge of phonics to help them spell accurately.
Our curriculum teaches the children to add variation and description to their work by developing their vocabulary, including the use of interesting adjectives and adverbs and developing sentence structure using conjunctions and sentence openers. By the end of Key Stage One, children have been taught the fundamentals of punctuation and grammar. This structural and technical knowledge is fostered alongside developing a love for writing as a means for communication.
This process continues into Key Stage Two, by which time children have mastered simple sentence structure enabling them to develop their writing style. As they progress towards Year 6, children are taught to write for a range of purposes – to entertain, inform, explain, persuade and discuss – using explicit sentence models and ambitious vocabulary. They then learn to shape these sentences into coherent paragraphs, before planning and creating their own original works of fiction and non-fiction. Children also apply their writing skills across the curriculum: writing up experiments in science, recounting events in History and describing processes in Geography.
Throughout the teaching sequence, children should be taught:
- Foundational knowledge required for writing: letter formation, spelling, handwriting
- To apply skills that they have previous been taught through carefully dictated sentences
- Preparation for the sequence, through familiarisation with text type (context, audience and purpose)
- Analysis / deconstruction of text, identifying text and sentence level features of model texts
- Vocabulary collection for use in word banks and display within the classroom
- Modelled writing (demonstration) – teacher models the process
- Talk for writing (oral composition), imitating and rehearsing sentences
- Shared writing (we all have a go together)
- Supported composition – drafting (independent/group/shared/response partners)
- Continue to model spelling and handwriting skills as part of the sequence
- Guided writing – supporting individuals at the level of need
- Opportunities to write daily and build their stamina for writing
- Opportunities to proof read, edit and redraft their writing
- Regular independent application – purposes and audiences for writing are essential.
Process Approach
The approach to teaching writing builds on elements of good practice from Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ strategy and the EEF reports ‘Improving Literacy in KS1 and Improving Literacy in KS2’.
Our work in writing is inspired by a core text or other media type, which should be referred to in English lessons, focusing on plot points, rather than full texts. Plot points can form the starting point for phase 3 and 4 lessons.
Writing is taught in 6 or 7 discrete phases, depending on the requirements of the unit. See below.
Phase 1: Unlocking prior and essential knowledge
At the beginning of a unit of work, children will spend a lesson finding out essential background knowledge to enable them to understand the context of the text that the unit is based. For example, if a story take place during the Diwali festival, children would learn about Diwali, ensuring that key vocabulary pertinent to the topic is understood.
Phase 2: Understanding a text type or genre
Introduce the new text type to the children and explain what their final outcome will be. Contextualise the work they will produce by exploring the audience and purpose. Who and what are they writing for? Children are introduced to a WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) and understand the features of the text type including grammar, punctuation and structural features. Children can use similar example texts to explore these features. This should only be one lesson. Teachers should plan these lessons so that the maximum amount of time possible is spent understanding the features and not colouring or shading.
Phase 3: Understanding specific writing skills and generating the vocabulary required to put knowledge of writing skills into practice effectively.
Building on practice developed from Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ Children take part in lessons where their understanding of specific features of writing are understood, vocabulary choices are enhanced and children transfer skills into sentence writing activities. The key notion here is that a single skill is developed at length within the lesson. The sentences produced should be usable within the text type that the children will write, but the sentences in each learning chunk should not link together to create a paragraph.
We aim to ensure that children develop a deep understanding of grammatical or language features. We encourage children to ‘chot’ (chat and jot) to generate ideas and to acquire suitable vocabulary to extend their understanding. Teachers model using metacognitive techniques to show children how to produce example sentences that are pertinent to the text type being worked upon.
These sentences can be manipulated to improve them – use of the visualiser should be a regular feature to collectively improve sentences.
Think also big chot, little chot. In order to further develop children’s understanding, particularly in upper KS2. Sentences can be further improved by combining grammatical and language features. Big chot for the main focus, subsequent little chot for a secondary feature.
In these lessons, children will work on two pages. Their left-hand page will be used to generate vocabulary and ideas within each learning chunk. The right-hand page will be for the writing of the sentences in their final form. This page will also feature in the moment and post lesson marking and should evidence the impact of feedback daily. The focus of marking and feedback will be the learning objective for that day, first and foremost. However, teachers should also ensure that errors in basic skills are identified and corrected. Work is expected to be marked on a daily basis.
Typically, there would be somewhere between 3 and 6 of these lessons in a unit of work.
Phase 4: Drafting
In Phase 4 teachers begin the process of turning previously generated grammatical and language skills and vocabulary into sections of writing.
Teachers link together topic specific knowledge from phase 1, knowledge of genre features from phase 2 and language, grammatical and vocabulary knowledge from phase 3 to model WAGOLLS using metacognitive techniques for sections of an overall texts. These are relatively short pieces of work to avoid cognitive overload. Children draft their own version using carefully selected success criteria and a clear learning objective. Teachers develop systems to encourage peer and self-assessment (so LOs and SC need to be precise, as this is how their writing is measured). Teachers and teaching assistants will provide in the moment feedback also to some children linked to the LO and SC.
Phase 5: Drafting
In phase 5 teachers model proof reading strategies against the LOs and SC. Children refine their writing using purple pens. It is important that proof reading is focused on the learning objectives and not secretarial skills, as might traditionally have done.
Phase 6: Editing
Between phase 5 and phase 6 writing needs to be marked with care and attention to detail. At this phase children need to know if they have achieved the SC that contribute to the LO. They also need to have their attention drawn to specific spelling errors that require correction. Children should also check that the overall piece of writing is coherent. Checks on grammatical issues, for example swapping between tenses within the section should be made. Editing should take place underneath their piece of writing and pupils should be taught to use “foot notes” to illustrate where their edits are required. As with all other phases, teachers should model with effective metacognitive strategies how to edit work using anonymous examples. Effective marking ensures that teachers are able to use Assessment for Learning to inform the editing in phase 6. Children will be guided to edit work through the comments of their teachers. Editing should be completed using a purple pen.
Phase 7: Publishing
Work should be published only when there is a purpose – a specific audience.
Turning the edited piece into a finished, easy to read final piece is important when there is a reason to do it but without purpose it is counterproductive.
Possible reasons to publish:
- Display in class or a public area
- Send to parents e.g an invitation to a class tea party
- Send to a recipient e.g the president of Brazil
- Create an anthology for another class
Therefore phase 7 is not always going to be a feature of a learning sequence.
Additional Information
Teaching Sequences
These will vary in length, but all sequences should follow the same order (sometimes two pieces of work or more will come from a single text. In this case phase 1 does not need to be repeated).
You may wish to make use of an Assessment for Learning day at the end of a sequence to address a particular gap identified form the final piece of writing.
From a single text you might produce two or three writing outputs which might have their own sequences. For example, you might have three grammatical features in phase 3 for the first output and three different ones for the second output.
For each example, a medium-term planning sheet should be completed.
Planning
Long term plans progression documents have been developed to identify the range of texts used to inspire learning, the text types to be written in each unit, the grammar and punctuation features learnt and the links to spellings learnt through the teaching of the Read, Write, Inc Spelling programme.
Teachers will produce a medium-term plan for each teaching sequence.
Planning should show briefly the outline activity for the lesson and how the lesson has been adapted for pupils with SEND.
Spelling
At Batley Parish, children follow the Read, Write, Inc spelling scheme. English long-term plans share a link to the teaching sequence within the scheme, so that teachers can link spelling learning to their lessons, where required. This will be useful when correcting spellings. Similarly, teachers should be aware of the phonics stage of their child when correcting their spelling work.
RWI Spelling is taught daily in Year Two and taught over five days in a fortnight in KS2.
Handwriting
At Batley Parish we use Letterjoin handwriting scheme to teach handwriting. This is a progressive scheme that takes children on a journey from printing in Reception, through printing and pre-cursive scripts in Year One, learning to write in a cursive style in Y2 and developing their cursive style in KS2.