Writing at Hareside
Intent
At Hareside Primary School, we believe that all pupils should be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. We want pupils 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 throughout their time in primary school.
We intend to create confident writers who develop stamina for writing throughout school. We ensure the children are immersed in a range of genres and write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Our aim is that in lessons children will have a clear understanding of the text type, the purpose and intended impact of writing.
We set high expectations and all pupils are encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, by developing a good, joined, handwriting style by the end of Year 6. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process.
We understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both grammar, spelling and composition skills, and so we encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school.
Implementation
Early Years
At Hareside communication and language are at the heart of our writing. In Early Years we focus on building language and supporting communication which will be key to developing their writing journey. We encourage the children to play around with language, using alliteration, nursery rhymes, and listening activities. These provide vital foundations for building phonically awareness. We aim to build our children’s vocabulary and look for every opportunity to introduce them to new words. Listening to and sharing stories is an important part of our daily routine as it helps our children become aware of story language and story structures which is crucial in the development of thinking and writing.
In our Early years the development of fine and gross motor skills is critical to develop early writing skills. We provide our children with opportunities to build their physical strength and control in their core, upper body, hands and fingers. We combine this with activities to develop eye to hand co-ordination. These skills are essential to develop a comfortable pencil grip and good pencil control.
We actively encourage the children to mark make by providing a wide range of opportunities and resources indoors and outdoors, for example, clipboards, chalks, post it notes and notepads. We model writing and this encourages the children to give meaning to their own marks and to begin to form letter-like shapes. When the children are ready we encourage them to make plausible attempts at capturing some sounds they hear in words.
In Reception the children use the Read Write Inc phonic based scheme to begin to write recognisable letters, spell words by identifying sounds in them and to write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.
Key Stage One
In Key Stage One we continue their writing journey by teaching the skill of recognising and writing simple and multi-clause sentences, using the correct punctuation and correct capitalisation. Listening to and sharing of key texts continues to be a part of our daily routine to support awareness of a range of writing genres. Writing in a range of styles such as narrative, poetry and non-fiction are driven by high quality power of reading texts. Talk for writing is key and is essential for sharing ideas and thinking through sentence structures.
Further building of key vocabulary are displayed as word banks or word walls adding more sophisticated words and meanings. Teacher modelling of writing styles and sentence structure supports writing and offers starting points as well as demonstrating correct handwriting techniques.
Year 1 are encouraged to write sentences in order to create short narrative and non-fiction texts. They work towards using adjectives to describe and re-read their writing to check it makes sense.
Year 2 progress a little further by writing about real events, recording these simply and clearly, writing simple coherent narratives about their own and others experiences and as they re-read their writing they are encouraged to suggest changes. Personal creativity is encouraged in every piece of writing and there are planned opportunities for cross curricular writing.
Spelling is taught discretely using RWI spelling programme, children are given opportunities to practice spellings using look, say, cover, write, check methods and after weekly spelling tests and dictations are expected to spell these words correctly in all writing tasks across the curriculum.
Lower Key Stage Two
In Lower Key Stage Two development of the children’s writing journey continues through reading high quality power of reading texts and there are opportunities for writing in more sophisticated genres such as newspaper reports, information texts and performance poetry. The children begin to use ideas from their own reading and modelled examples to plan their writing. The children are encouraged to use deliberate ambitious word choices to add detail and creativity to their writing. Proofreading confidently and amending their own and others writing becomes an important part of their writing journey.
Year 3 are expected to use subordinate clauses and write using correct tense throughout a piece of writing. Progressing further from conjunctions used in year 2 the additions of adverbs and prepositions to show time are encouraged as well as the correct use of inverted commas for direct speech.
Year 4 continue to maintain accurate tense throughout a piece of writing and consistently organise their writing into paragraphs around a theme. They are encouraged to expand noun phrases regularly with the addition of modifying adjectives and prepositional phrases
Upper Key Stage Two
In Upper Key stage two children continue to use high quality, power of reading texts which enhance English lessons and the wider curriculum; provide inspiration for writing; give the opportunity for children to widen their vocabulary and understand how grammar and punctuation can engage the reader. Children gain an increasing awareness of audience and develop their proof reading skills, using the editing process to create final pieces to the best of their ability with increased independence. Across key stage two, children write a wide variety of genres for fiction, non - fiction and poetry writing in a fluent and legible hand writing style which by the time they leave year 6, will suit their audience.
In Year 5, children are expected to consciously engage the reader using descriptions of settings, characters and atmosphere and use dialogue to convey a character and advance the action with increasing confidence. Children will aim to select and use organisational and presentational devices that are relevant to the text type, e.g. headings, bullet points, underlining, etc.
The children will write in paragraphs which are usually suitably linked, using adverbials to build cohesion. They will build upon their use of basic punctuation and increasingly accurate use of commas and begin to use brackets or dashes to indicate parenthesis, including those used in relative clauses. Children will use modal verbs appropriately and adverbs will be used to indicate degrees of possibility and create shades of meaning in a text.
In Year 6, when our children complete their writing journey at Hareside, they will be able to write effectively and independently for a range of audiences and purposes, understanding how to engage the reader and write in a lively and interesting way across a wide range of genres.
Children will continue to build upon their use of language, sentence structure and punctuation from year 5 and use effective descriptions to advance action and convey character in narrative. They will become increasingly aware of the different types of vocabulary and grammatical structures that reflect what the writing requires and use a range of devices to build cohesion within and across paragraphs. Children will be encouraged to use the range of punctuation taught at key stage 2 and also show they can use colons, semi-colons and hyphens correctly.
Across Key stage Two, spellings are taught discretely using the Emile spelling programme with tasks and opportunities to explore the spelling rule each week and accompanying spelling practice set for homework. Within the scheme, children are also taught the common exception words appropriate to their year group and or ability. Children taking part in Fresh Start or Read Write Inc interventions also receive extra spelling practice. All children are given opportunities to practice spellings using look, say, cover, write, check methods and after weekly spelling tests and dictations are expected to spell these words correctly in all writing tasks across the curriculum.
Impact
By the time children leave Hareside they are familiar with most writing genres. Their writing journey is well established, children are confident writers, and they produce sustained pieces of creative writing using a sophisticated range of grammar and punctuation skills. Ongoing formative assessment of writing alongside in school and partnership moderations inform planning and teaching to allow us to achieve this. Skills taught and developed can also be seen in aspects of cross curricular writing in other subjects. Targeted interventions and adult support enable the success of individual children. We encourage children every year to have high aspirations towards their writing as they continue to grow and develop.