We aim to create a writing curriculum which enables children to express their creativity and provides them with the skills necessary to become independent writers, with strong authorial voices. We provide our writers with the tools to communicate and share their ideas with those around them and to do so by understanding the impact of powerful vocabulary and authorial choices. We believe that carefully selected literature is vital to the development of young writers and we therefore use a variety of different text types and strong teacher and peer models to help shape our own writing.
Implementation
In KS1 and KS2, children follow the national curriculum by creating writing which showcases a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Writing is closely linked to topic, as children create pieces of literature which reflect their learning across the curriculum. By using carefully selected class readers, which are referred to in each writing lesson, children are then able to highlight language that has made an impact on them, as well as key geographical and historical knowledge which enables young writers to build intricate plots and characters. SpaG is also taught through writing, as children explicitly learn a grammar technique and then understand how to use these writer’s techniques to manipulate sentence structure and control their flow of thought.
Our pathway is as follows:
Immersion: children focus on powerful language, looking at key texts and considering the features of genres.
Plan: children draft key ideas that they would like to include in their writing, with a close focus on grammatical techniques and sentence starters.
Write: children use their plan to write, with a specific focus on expanding their ideas when planning into structured and detailed sentences. Writing lessons also ensure that children are using a variety of punctuation for both accuracy and effect on the reader. Children are then encouraged to stop and re-read as they are writing to ensure that they have the technique to proof read and spot their own errors.
Edit: children re-draft their writing, with the direction of detailed teacher marking. Through the use of collaboration and modelled communication, children are then given a variety of opportunities to work closely with their peers to improve each other’s work as well as their own.
Publish: children publish cycles of work which are based around drama and performance. This enables children to work on their drama skills and to think carefully about key executional skills, such as: intonation, volume and movement. It also encourages children to listen and respond to their peers questions and answers about their compositions.
Independent write: following a completed cycle, children are then encouraged to create a piece of writing, which closely links to the work of their previous cycle. This enables children to showcase their independent strengths and needs, whilst allowing the teacher to set individualised targets for the following cycle.