Writing

Curriculum Intent  (what is the purpose of this subject)

At Warren Mead, we believe that a quality ‘skills based’ English curriculum develops children’s ability to become effective writers.

We are aware that our children live in a digital society and have fewer language models to support them. Effective oracy impacts spelling, grammar and cohesion. With this in mind, we intend to support our teachers in planning and delivering high quality English lessons where modelling of oracy, spoken language, vocabulary and written language is of a high quality and tailored to the needs of the children. In turn, we aim to have all pupils ending their primary education being able to read, write and speak with clarity, confidence and credibility so that the children are equipped with the skills they need to increase their self-esteem and succeed in the rest of their education and in the rest of their lives. Furthermore, we aim to close the attainment gap between our disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

It is imperative that children from Reception to Year 6 are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their speaking, listening and writing skills, which they adopt through exposure to high quality texts and effective modelling. Through our skills-based approach, we aim to foster pupils' interest in writing by offering varied contexts for writing to enable the children to write for different purposes and audiences. By taking pupils on a writing journey, we intend to expose them regularly to writing cycles where they experience planning, drafting and redrafting their writing. We intend to give accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar a high importance in English lessons in order to meet the demands of the National Curriculum and give the children they need to convey meaning, no matter the context.

Curriculum Implementation (how is the subject structured/sequenced)

• Writing is taught through a learning journey (skills based) approach.
• Teachers write their own modelled texts inspired by high quality, age-appropriate texts
• Objectives are derived from the National Curriculum
• Bloom’s Taxonomy higher order thinking skills are used to help generate learning objectives
• A discrete SPaG lesson will be taught at the start of every learning journey and link to the genre of writing for that period
• Assessment style questions are incorporated into SPaG lessons to support teacher’s judgements and to prepare students for summative assessment
• A discrete vocabulary lesson is taught in every learning journey to develop children’s oracy skills and expose them to rich and challenging language
• Some ‘Talk for writing’ methods are used throughout the learning journey to support children with their oracy, planning and composition skills e.g. box up planning and text mapping
• Children experience 1:1 conferencing with their teachers during the learning journey to work on targets and improve writing skills
• In Years 2 and 6, writing is assessed against the TAF exemplifications
• In every other year, writing is assessed against the writing indicator checklists derived from Pupil Asset
• Pixl Diagnostic writes completed three times a year to track progress of independent writing. The SpaG skills should be determined from your QLA analysis of diagnostic writes (PIXL)
• Teachers use diagnostic writes to see what they need to include in modelled texts
• As many opportunities for extended writing are provided during the application stage of a lesson to ensure children are increasing their stamina
• From Y2-6, a typical journey would last 2-3 weeks. At least one fiction and one non-fiction learning journey should be taught each half term. A typical learning journey would be structured in the following way:
• Handwriting is taught using the Nelson handwriting scheme.

Pedagogy: (what is the teaching approach taken)

• The importance of a high-quality oracy education- Alex Quigly
• Talk for Writing- Pie Corbett

Evaluation: (how will outcomes be measures for your subject)

• Diagnostic assessment writes
• Whole school writing moderations
• Monitoring of planning/books/teaching
• Cohort reports on Pupil Assess

Impact of Curriculum (what are the outcomes of your subject)

Pupils will make at least good progress from their starting points. They will be equipped with a strong command of the written word and acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing. Pupils will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.