Writing

At Althorpe and Keadby, as a whole teaching staff we have revised and re-written our writing curriculum for 2023 - 2024.

Intent

First we gathered together what we believed were the underpinning principles to create confident and competent writers. 

 Through our writing curriculum we strive to; 

• Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers.
• Provide exciting but purposeful writing opportunities for children to write. 
• Create masters of writing by ensuring that all children are exposed to the knowledge they need to write (both factual, grammatical and genre specific) before they are asked to write.
• Ensure that children are able to articulate their purpose for writing and therefore how they are writing their personal pieces. 
• Give all children the opportunity to write for purpose daily.
• We want all children to acquire a wide vocabulary and to be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.
• We want all children to have a solid understanding of age appropriate grammar rules and apply these effectively to their writing 
• We believe that all children should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing by developing a legible, joined, individual handwriting style in pen by the time they move to secondary school.
• We want every child to have a good solid knowledge of phonics to springboard children to becoming fluent writers.
• To plan a progressive curriculum to build upon previous teaching, with regular assessment to ensure each child’s needs are met to reach their full potential..

In Early Years 

Reading and Writing  is integrated throughout the Early Years curriculum accessible at all times throughout the day and beyond. In EYFS there is a huge focus on experiencing and exploring writing for purpose. From 2 years old, our curriculum is planned to expose children to stories, rhymes and songs which develop our children's understanding of different narrative spines and language.

Children are exposed to purposeful print in the environment and share a wide range of well matched stories and explore these through play.

Motor skills activities such as dough disco and squiggle while you wiggle are also well mapped developing the physical skills your child needs to hold a pen and begin communicating their thoughts through writing. 

Our Early Years staff follow the 'getting ready for phonics' principles with our youngest children developing their vocabulary and auditory memory skills, vital for generating, holding and then writing out words and sentences when they are ready.

Once a child is developmentally ready they begin their writing journey, learning to write familiar important words to them such as their name and then using our phonics programme 'Read Write Inc' they are introduced to each of the sounds and begin to build words and then sentences to communicate their ideas.

In reception you will see our children working on phonics based writing ideas, creating lists, captions, labels and often writing which supports their play. There is also a daily focus literacy session which focuses on developing confident, phonically aware writers.   

Our reception children are now also taking part in the 'Drawing Club' programme daily. This will work to develop your child's imagination, developing ideas for writing as well as developing the physical stamina needed for writing and using letters and symbols as 'codes with meaning' As the year goes on, this will then develop to give children a purpose for writing longer captions and short sentences based on their own ideas. This year's reception are the first to take part in Drawing Club so we can't wait to see how this develops as the year goes on. 

Key Stage 1 and 2

Throughout Key Stages One and Two writing is taught daily. Each class will be working towards a purposeful piece of writing which children will have acquired the knowledge for before they begin.

Children are really focused through a hook on the purpose (real where possible) for their writing and who it is for. From the earliest age children are asked to consider who they are writing for and so make all their choices based on this audience in mind.

We want our children to really master writing for different purposes and audiences. For this reason you will see that we have decided to gradually introduce children to new purposes and genres for writing in a very specific and progressive way. You will also notice that children will have a number of opportunities to revisit text types/ audiences so they can rehearse, refine  and master skills they have been introduced to.  

In Key Stage 2 we have chosen to focus on how you plan for writing making intentional choices before you write. Their are two parts to our planning process; What do you want to say? and How do you want to say it?

We have also made the choice for editing to be a part of everyday, looking at re-writing sentences repeatedly until it is automatic and children are able to look at each of their pieces critically. 

At the end of a unit we will present our work to the given audience, this could be online, in a local newsletter or delivering a letter or email to a specific person. In this way our children will see the writing process in its full purposeful cycle. 

Finally, we will use 'hot write opportunities' for children to free write independently and demonstrate their own knowledge progression following an intensive unit of work. 

Grammar and Punctuation

Within the National Curriculum grammar and punctuation is a key focus and as such we teach grammar as an explicit part of the curriculum.

At Althorpe and Keadby we use a ‘3-pronged approach’ to grammar and punctuation teaching which begins in KS1 and follows through into KS2. It is essential that children are taught to use the correct vocabulary from an early age and all teachers model the use of this when they teach grammar.

The first stage of our grammar teaching is the explicit stand-alone session. This allows teachers to explain and model for the children the grammar or punctuation which is being taught. Children are then able to practise this new skill (usually through a written activity or cloze procedure). This develops the use of fluency of the new grammar/punctuation skill.

The second stage then shows the teacher modelling the grammar or punctuation through the class text or a cross curricular example. Children are then able to see the new learning being used in context.

Finally, children would be expected to use the new learning in their own writing therefore embedding the skill. This learning is then quite often assessed in an independent piece of writing. 

Handwriting

It is paramount that children are rigorously taught correct letter formation from the very beginning of their time in school.

During the foundation stage the children are taught to sit properly in order to have the correct posture for writing, hold a pencil in the correct position and develop a legible handwriting style. They develop their fine and gross motor skills through Funky Fingers and Dough Disco.

Throughout the school we use the Good Practice for Handwriting Guidance from the National Handwriting Association as our guide to teaching handwriting. 

Teachers are expected to role model the school’s handwriting style when marking children’s work, writing on the board and on displays around the school.