Intent

Having the ability to write successfully and skilfully will open up a world of communication for our pupils. Being able to communicate ideas and thoughts coherently with others through the written form, will ensure that they are able to get the most out of their learning across the curriculum and life beyond school. Therefore, our aim for all pupils at Longthorpe is that they leave as confident and motivated writers in order to achieve this.

In order to write successfully, pupils need to develop confidence across the two dimensions of writing: transcription and composition. Additionally, pupils need to have a developed understanding of audience and purpose, so they are able to adapt their language and style to suit a range of contexts, audiences and reasons for writing. Finally, as writers, pupils will need to be able to independently plan, edit and evaluate the effectiveness of their own writing. To enable this, we have designed a curriculum which allows pupils to develop all of these skills across their primary learning journey. We have based our writing curriculum on the ‘Write Stuff’ approach by Jane Considine. We want to raise the aspirations of pupils and teachers so that the often tricky concepts associated with effective writing are made more accessible. We believe that this approach will bring clarity and consistency to the mechanics of writing and enable our pupils to write effectively. Additionally, it is a fun, creative and rigorous approach to the teaching of writing, allowing pupils to apply new skills, include interesting vocabulary, and to write effective sentences full of impact that keep the reader interested. 

IMPLEMENTATION

• Before teaching any unit, teachers will have looked through the planning carefully and selected which aspects of grammar they are going to teach - and know what the intended outcome will be. 
• A grammar session is taught at least once a week. Part of this session will be a review of key learning or an aspect that has proved tricky. A new aspect of grammar is also introduced, with opportunities to practise/apply the new skill.
• Cooperative strategies and games such as ‘Find the Fiction’ (sharing sentences where two are correct and one with errors) are often used in lessons, allowing pupils to discuss and explain the errors.
• Pupils have opportunities to complete ‘Check Its’, which require them to edit ‘real-life’ errors from class writing.
• As part of the teaching sequence, teachers plan ‘sentence stacking’ lessons and independent writing sequences. ‘Sentence stacking’ refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage pupils with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.
• Before each lesson, the class’ shared writing is re-read to check how the next part of writing follows on. Teachers add to the shared version as they select the best efforts of different pupils to type/scribe for the working wall. The pupils feel a great sense of pride when their sentence is chosen, and it becomes incorporated into the text.
• The narrative map is on display with relevant sections (plot points) being revealed as lessons progress. Alongside this, teachers have the ‘Boxed-up’ success criteria, which will be discussed with pupils and filled in. Teachers discuss the effect on the reader and what techniques are being used.
• Clear learning objectives which are shared, are linked to the effect on the reader (via the Boxed-up Success Criteria).
• Pupils have opportunities to share, collect and build their vocabulary knowledge through short burst sessions using talking partners, or ‘Rally Robin’ type activities.
• Visual aids and resources are used to support learning, such as ‘whitebus’ for subordinating conjunctions.
• Teachers will model writing a sentence using ‘think alouds’ to emphasise why certain words have been chosen and/or why specific aspects of grammar have been included. Once the model sentence is written, teachers will pass the task over to the pupils, expecting them to write their own sentence. At this point, teachers will scaffold the task as needed.  
• Pupils edit their work using the CUPS & ARMS approach.
• Each pupil will have a writing target in the front of their books, and they will be held accountable for improving themselves by working towards achieving it. At least once a week, teachers will encourage pupils to reflect on their sentences and find examples of where they have met their writing target.

Key Documents

Entire Writing Curriculum - PDF Version 

To find out more about our curriculum please contact the school office.