Welcome to the Writing Page

At Eastrington Primary School we encourage and provide the opportunity for all children to flourish and shine in their writing. We support children in developing a range of segmenting and composing skills so that they can write confidently and independently. We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. It is also our intent to develop children who are confident with: planning and composing texts using the appropriate features, structuring texts accurately, writing for a purpose, using punctuation accurately, using a range of spelling strategies, editing and improving their work and making adventurous language choices.

Implementation

Children are shown the importance and value of communicating through writing in a wide range of genres and are helped to develop accurate spelling and punctuation. There is a progressive emphasis on the skills of planning, drafting, proof reading and editing. The children are given frequent opportunities in school to write in different contexts using quality texts as a model and for a variety of purposes and audiences. Pupils use red pen to encourage and support editing and improving their own writing.

Teachers use a variety of high-quality personalised teaching and learning styles with planning led by the 2014 National Curriculum. For example, teachers will often use scaffolding by providing WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) alongside success criteria for composition of non-fiction and fiction texts.

High quality texts are used to develop and promote the use of adventurous language and vocabulary choices and inspire writing opportunities. Dictionaries, word mats and thesauruses are available in classes, and opportunities for cross curricular writing are always sought.

We use the purchased handwriting scheme Write Well in school to help children develop fluent, clear and legible joined up writing.

In Reception and KS1, daily phonics is the key to the children’s learning of spelling. This is taught using the LCP planning (linked with Jolly Phonics) and then in conjunction with the Spelling Shed scheme. This scheme is then followed by all pupils in Key Stage Two. Children are taught to blend sounds to read and segment to spell. At the same time, they learn words which are not phonically regular (common exception words).

Pupils in Key Stages One and Two are given age and ability appropriate weekly spelling lists to learn, taken from the phonics focus or the Spelling Shed scheme. These are also reinforced by the online resources and app, which the children can play at home. The spellings are subsequently tested and teachers monitor results.

Impact

The impact of our text rich curriculum and promotion of language and vocabulary will help to develop children as writers, giving them the skills to write for different genres and situations. Our children will be able to:

Enjoy English lessons and are confident to share their ideas.
Demonstrate a love for writing and being able to talk confidently about a range of genres.
Write for a range of different purposes and audiences.
Have a widened vocabulary and write texts which include rich vocabulary choices.
Develop their imaginations and use texts as a model for their writing.
Confidently apply their writing skills across other areas of learning.