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Newbold and Tredington C of E Primary School & Day Nursery

Newbold and Tredington

C of E Primary School and Day Nursery

Creating a chance to SHINE everyday

English

Teaching Writing – Our Whole School Approach at Newbold and Tredington CE Primary

Children write for an audience, purpose and genre. All non-fiction genres are taught every school term as well as fiction and poetry.

There is clear progression in writing across the school.

We have a 5 point approach demonstrated by a high five, followed by independent writing across the curriculum:

Writing hand

Good example

A good example is used to set the expectation at the start of each genre when first taught; this could be an extract from the high quality book, a Pie Corbett (Talk for Writing) piece or written by the teacher for example. These are shared at the start of a sequence of work and annotated and colour coded to develop success criteria.

Book Talk

The teaching of English is based around a good quality text. When reading, children take part in a range of activities to engage with the text and evidence of this case be found in the children’s books e.g. comprehension questions created by the teacher with reference to the National Curriculum.

Role play - interview

Role play/Research

We use a range of drama activities such as hot seating and smaller writing activities such as letters or diaries in role as a character from the class novel.

Grammar

Grammar is taught in relation to genres wherever possible. As a build up to a piece of writing, children are given opportunities to use the grammar features/language features identified one by one in several lessons before beginning to plan and write. Children use agreed colours to show when they have added a grammatical/language feature to their writing.

Modelled Writing

Writing is taught through modelling, shared composition, guided writing and independent writing.  Modelled writing: the teacher talks aloud the thought processes as a writer. They have complete control over the writing and make explicit the structure, language features, spelling and punctuation of the text type as appropriate. Shared writing: this is a collaborative approach; pupils contribute their ideas and thoughts for the teacher to select the most appropriate. The teacher needs to give reasons for the choices made. Supported composition: The children work in pairs to provide the next sentence of the text. This may follow from either modelled or the shared writing process.

Pupils are grouped in a variety of ways to best suit their needs, for example by writing ability or target needs. The teacher and LSAs work with each group in rotation during the week so that every child partakes in guided writing once per week. The task is carefully selected to provide an appropriate level of challenge and will focus on a particular aspect of the writing process as opposed to writing a complete piece. Tasks may include the processes of planning, drafting and editing pieces of writing.

Children are given opportunities to plan, draft and edit. Sufficient editing time following marking allows children to move on in their writing and is planned into lessons.

Children’s writing can be presented in a range of ways. Older children may choose how to present their written work.

My Writing (Independent Writing)

All children are given opportunities to apply their understanding of the text type in their own writing both in English and across the curriculum. This is vitally important if children are to develop their skills as writers within different genres.

As children become more confident writers and, if it is not the first time the text type has been taught, they will start to create their own success criteria and make decisions about which features and vocabulary to include.