Writing

Intent 

At Rivers Primary Academy, we believe that all pupils should be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. Pupils are enriched with a wide range of opportunities to acquire a wide vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn.  We follow Jane Considine’s approach to The Write Stuff for the teaching of writing.

Implementation 

Our writing units are underpinned by experience days, where children are given real life experiences linked to the subject of their writing to support the children to bring their writing to life and sequenced sentence stacking lessons where children are taught grammar and punctuation.

Our genre progression map ensures that all children access a range of writing genres throughout the year and key stage. Genres are revisited to deepen their understanding and skills are built upon over the year and across the year groups. Where possible, links are made to other curriculum areas ensuring that we allow for repetition of learning in a variety of contexts. 

Grammar and punctuation are taught daily making the best links to the text that is being taught. Teachers use the unit plans from ‘The Write Stuff’ to identify grammar and punctuation elements that are relevant and ambitious for the year group. These are added to our medium term plans and are revisited often throughout the unit and the academic year. 

Handwriting is taught daily following the requirements of the National Curriculum. Children in EYFS and KS1 are taught letter formation in line with the sequence of RWI sounds. Children in Year 2 begin to join their handwriting and by the end of KS2, all children will have developed their own joined up handwriting style. Children who meet ARE for handwriting will use a handwriting pen. 

Assessment is ongoing throughout the unit and independent writing takes place at the end of each unit. In addition to this, we participate in No More Marking a national comparative judgement tool. We use the data to inform future medium term plans. 

Impact 

I love teaching writing. It’s my favourite lesson of the day! The way the experience days and sentence stacking lessons interweave allow the children to write with great knowledge, emotion and a wide vocabulary. Year 3 teacher

I love experience days because they make me feel happy and I learn lots of new words. Year 1 child

I like seeing my name on our class sentence strips. It makes me feel proud.  Year 3 child.

I enjoy writing about lots of different topics and learning the different techniques that I need to use in my writing. Year 5 child.