Writing
Intent
At Valley View, we want our children to leave school as confident, competent, imaginative and accurate writers; ready and equipped with the necessary skills to undertake their writing tasks at high school and in the wider world. We believe that at the heart of a successful writer, is a child who has a love of reading and is a confident speaker with a rich vocabulary. We provide our children with a variety of quality texts in both reading and writing lessons and a range of opportunities to develop speaking skills through discussion and performance.
At the heart of Valley View are our core values and it is our aim to explore and develop these through the children’s writing. Children have a range of opportunities to become reflective learners through the drafting, writing and editing stages of writing and are actively encouraged to work together; sharing initial ideas for their writing and peer assessing their work. Through the varied quality texts that we use to inspire and drive our writing, children gain a deeper understanding of a range of concepts and themes. Through stories about migration, those about inspirational people and events that have shaped our word and stories set in different places, children enrich and develop their understanding and appreciation of living in a very diverse world. Regular opportunities to explore stories and texts about nature and environmental issues broaden our children’s understanding of how to become more environmentally minded and to grow a respect and appreciation for the world in which we live. Throughout our writing units across school, we aim to enrich and enhance our curriculum through opportunities that offer rich discussion and where possible, link to and further enhance our children’s wider learning.
Implementation
EYFS
Children start their writing journey through mark making activities which are carefully planned into their play. They take part in drawing groups, where they are guided by the teacher to use marks and lines required for writing. Through carefully planned physical activities, the children build the core strength and motor skills required for writing.
Teaching and Learning
From Reception to Year Six, we follow the ‘Ready, Steady, Write’ scheme, which is a research-based scheme for writing, utilising proven approaches and pedagogy.
Each unit of writing follows the approach of:
Immerse – Analyse – Plan – Write
Children are initially immersed in the style of writing they are to undertake. An immersion lesson might provide a mixture of pictures, sounds and experiences and will also include the vehicle text, which is always a high quality text used as a driver for the writing outcome. We firmly believe that in order to produce their best writing, the children have to be inspired and enthused. Children will also be immersed in the vocabulary and grammar required to be successful writers. During the ‘analyse’ stage of writing, children will look at a quality WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) to better understand the language and layout features of the chosen genre. Throughout these initial stages, children are provided with opportunities to practise these skills through ‘incidental writes’. They then plan their own writing using what they have learnt from previous lessons then finally write their final piece, making edits and improvements as they write. Grammar and punctuation are embedded into our writing lessons and each lesson begins with a sentence accuracy task, when children practice a particular grammar or punctuation skill in a written sentence. Through this daily practice, children build the awareness of sentence structure and accuracy which is essential for writing.
Some of our writing units are not taken from the scheme, but instead offer children opportunities to write from a range of real experiences, for example: after going on residential, whilst planning a social action project or after a design and making task. Here, we still follow the immerse – analyse – plan – write structure.
The progression of skills is carefully mapped out so that children build on their prior learning and embed previously taught material. This allows children to acquire the knowledge of accurate sentence structure and text composition over time. The revisiting of writing skills is carefully planned for, in order that the children gain automaticity in applying them to their independent writing.
Further information about how writing skills and knowledge progress over time can be found in the writing progression document.
Spelling
Children in EYFS and Year One follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Scheme of Work. From Year Two, we follow the Spelling Shed scheme of work. This scheme includes all the statutory spelling content for each year group and also the common exception words for Year Two and the statutory words for Key Stage Two.
Children take home a mix of CEW/statutory words and words from the weekly spelling shed list to practise at home. They also all have access to the online Spelling Shed platform, where teachers set challenges and assignments.
.
Handwriting
Children in EYFS follow Little Wandle and focus on letter formation, along with building the core strength and motor skills needed for handwriting.
In Years One, Two and Three, children follow the Penpals scheme of work. The scheme begins by embedding correct letter formation then moving on to joining and fluency of writing. The children focus on a different skill each week and are encouraged to practise these skills in all their written work. From Year Four onwards, the children revisit and are reminded of the skills learnt in previous years and additional support and intervention is offered for children falling behind, using the Penpals intervention programme.
