Writing

Intent

Chidham Parochial Primary School believe that writing is a key skill for life both inside and out of education and that is why it features across all the subjects taught across our school. Our aim is to provide children with key transferrable writing skills to build on year on year, that can be used throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for secondary school.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that pupils enjoy writing and have passion and enthusiasm for it. Our aim is to ensure pupils write clearly, accurately and coherently, write in different styles and for different purposes and audiences, develop wide vocabulary and have solid understanding of the grammar rules / terminology appropriate for their age group. Our curriculum has also been designed to ensure that pupils are able to express themselves creatively and to communicate effectively with others.

Implementation

All children are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum. At Chidham Parochial Primary School each writing unit is planned in accordance with the national curriculum objectives, whilst linking them to the Cornerstones topics.

Our writing process:

• High quality vocabulary is gathered to help children access their writing, words are discussed and generated as a class.
• Phrases are developed and explored.
• High quality comparative text is used to develop understanding.
• An extending writing time may include planning, drafting, scaffolding and writing.
• Editing punctuation and spellings helps the children take ownership of their writing.
• A final copy / performance celebrates the writing.

Children in Reception and Year 1 follow the Little Wandle writing formation guidance. From Year 2, a high standard of joined, cursive handwriting is taught.

Chidham Parochial Primary School ensures that children are aware of their strengths and areas for development in writing so that learners can take ownership of their progress. We ensure that all learners are given next steps.

Grammar, punctuation and vocabulary skills are taught explicitly during writing lessons and the children identify how authors have used them effectively during their reading sessions.

The Shakespeare Spellings & More programme is in place throughout KS1 and KS2. The scheme is drawn from the 2014 National Curriculum and gives the children the opportunity to learn spelling rules and revise them. Spellings are taught at the start of the week and a test is given on Fridays, including words from previous weeks. This approach ensures spellings are remembered over time.

Impact

Children are confident learners who enjoy writing across a range of genres and love to discuss and share their ideas. Evidence of high quality varied work is shown in cross curricular writing opportunities.

At Chidham Parochial Primary School, the impact of the children’s learning is assessed and obtained through observing pupils in lessons, written work, in house and locality moderation and the school assessment system. Attainment at the end of EYFS, KS1 and KS2 is always aspiring to be above the National Average. Children also achieve highly in the phonics screening check at the end of Year 1.

Pupil voice is very important and helps the school to gauge the impact of our provision:

 “I love writing, I just can’t stop! I can now use finger spaces and spell out all my words on my own.” Year 2 child

“I was really good at writing poetry and this gave me lots of confidence when performing it in class” Year 3 child

“My stories seem to come alive. It helps collecting lots of words before I start writing.” Year 4 child

“My fact files are my best pieces of writing, I now have ideas to put into a leaflet.” Year 5 child

Please click here to see the progression of skills that our covered through our Cornerstones topics.

Please click here to see our English policy.

Please click here to see our Knowledge and Skills in English document.