Writing
At Tarvin Primary School, we aim to stimulate a love of language among our writers. We strive to develop writers who are passionate, enthusiastic, creative and dynamic. Through high-quality, engaging texts, our young writers begin their journey on the path to express themselves culturally and intellectually using a wide variety of genres.
Literacy Counts
'Across the school, we cultivate a love of writing and communicating through vocabulary rich and high quality literature, using Ready Steady Write by Literacy Counts. By inspiring and developing an appreciation of our rich and varied literary heritage and providing meaningful and exciting provocations to write, we develop a habit of writing widely and often. We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their Writing; can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts.
Organisation and Curriculum Coverage:
Each detailed unit of work centres on engaging, vocabulary-rich texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum. They provide:
- Clear sequential episodes of learning
- Vocabulary learning and contextualised spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Wider reading for the wider curriculum
- Example texts linked to writing outcomes
Our English curriculum is developed around a sequence of high quality age-appropriate texts, using Literacy Count’s Ready Steady Write units of learning. We use each book to create opportunities to:
- develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum, through sentence accuracy sessions;
- explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identifying the purpose and audience;
- plan and write an initial piece of Writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of Writing by editing and redrafting.
Building on this foundation, we teach literacy using a range of strategies which include:
- Group Discussion – Children discuss and interrogate new ideas in a small group or whole class setting. They listen to and value each other’s ideas whilst taking on board feedback so as to improve their own explanations.
- Partner Talk – Children work in partners to discuss their ideas. They are able to explain their ideas about texts they have read and prepare their ideas before they write.
- Questioning – Teachers use a range of questioning strategies to establish children’s current understanding and develop their learning.
- Modelled Writing – Teachers model Writing and editing to demonstrate the high expectations they have. They verbally ‘think aloud’ in order to make the Writing process explicit and provide a rich and varied vocabulary for the children to utilise in their own work. This happens daily, through sentence accuracy
- Shared Writing – Teachers use the ideas from the children to create shared pieces of Writing. This enables the children to see the Writing process in action as well as having pride and ownership over the finished piece.
- Editing – All children are signposted to regular opportunities for reviewing and editing their own and the work of others.
- Working walls – Teachers and children regularly update working walls to ensure learning is documented within a unit of work.
Class teachers ensure that the Writing process is clearly evident on working walls, with modelled examples being available to all pupils as the sequence of lessons develops.' - Literacy Counts
Handwriting
We teach letter formation using Read Write Inc. letter formation rhymes in EYFS and year 1. Please download the handwriting document below for handwriting letter formation phrases, characters and progression with pencil grip.
In year 2, the children refine their letter formation and learn to join their letters. They build upon and further develop these skills in KS2.
We use the Teach Handwriting scheme to support handwriting, gross and fine motor development. Further information about this can be found at the following website link: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
At Tarvin, we strive to ensure the children develop a love of language and develop the skills to become confident, capable and independent writers.
Opportunities for the children to develop and apply their skills in spelling, punctuation and grammar are given daily. Learning objectives in punctuation and grammar are taught through Pathways to Write lessons, alongside discrete lessons, where appropriate. These skills are regularly consolidated and further built upon across the curriculum and progressively through year groups.
We follow a mastery approach to the teaching of spelling through the programme ‘Pathways to Spell’. It is a programme designed to deliver the statutory content of the Primary National Curriculum for spelling in key stages 2. Through weekly teaching of spelling objectives and development of a whole school approach to word transcription, vocabulary development and proof-reading, the programme aims to develop children as proficient spellers.
You will find the curriculum overview, national curriculum mapping and progression of learning for writing for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.
