Quick links: Writing end-of-year end points

Impact

At Stithians, our aim is to increase children’s confidence, enjoyment, and ability in writing and communication. We believe that pupils in our school should become confident writers through a broad and balanced curriculum appropriate to their needs. We ensure that we provide all children with depth, breadth and ambition in their learning-ensuring that our curriculum is well sequenced and building on knowledge and skills gained as children progress through school. We promote a love of writing whereby write independently with enjoyment. We strive for our children to develop a passion for English to aid them in later life and to enable them to become lifelong learners.

Implementation

In our school we want to enable our pupils to write with confidence, coherence and accuracy for a variety of purposes and audiences. We aim for all children to enjoy and recognise the value of writing. We want our children to be able to write with grammatical accuracy and be able to apply spelling patterns correctly whilst using a neat handwriting style.

Through a combined approach to reading and writing, our writing curriculum has been built on a clear progression of skills to ensure children’s writing develops as they progress through school. Children are exposed to a breadth of rich texts and where appropriate links are made with the wider community and their learning across the curriculum.

Children are encouraged to be independent writers from a young age and draw upon their personal and reading experiences within their writing. Writing at Stithians promotes children to view themselves as an author by critically engaging and discussing texts. Our main principal of writing is to ensure we promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

For KS1 and KS2, we have a long-term reading spine for books and writing genres. Alongside this, we have devised a writing structure for teaching a unit of work. Both documents are at the heart of our writing curriculum and set out what is expected to be taught and how. These two documents allow for breadth of texts, progression of skills and consistency of teaching. During our writing lessons, teaching is based around a high-quality reading text and a writing genre from the long-term reading spine alongside the The Write Stuff literacy programme. Lessons are clearly structured to allow children to develop essential knowledge and skills. Children are taught specific skills to create a final, independent piece of writing over a unit of work. Children are also given the opportunity to apply their writing skills independently by completing short burst writes. For us at Stithians, effective composition involves forming, articulating and communicating ideas and then organising them coherently for the reader. The writing structure in place allows teachers to guide children through a clear writing process, and children are given the opportunity to learn skills, apply these skills, generate ideas, plan, draft, edit and publish their writing.

Our writing curriculum is designed to meet the aims required by the National Curriculum:

• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

 
We recognise the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum. For children to become fluent, creative and confident individuals, they are encouraged to express their ideas through speaking and listening opportunities. Pupils are provided with opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills across the curriculum. For children to become fluent, creative and confident individuals, they are encouraged to express their ideas on a daily basis. All children are encouraged to speak clearly and convey their ideas using Standard English. Pupils are involved in class and group discussions, assemblies, circle times and drama activities. Drama techniques are explored to enhance children’s spoken language, presentation skills and to use a stimuli pre or post-writing. Across every area of the curriculum pupils’ vocabulary is developed and widened. These lively, interactive learning exchanges provide all children with the tools and knowledge necessary to become successful writers.

Impact

Through our high-quality teaching of English, we aspire for all children to reach age related expectations or above by the end of each year group. In each lesson, teachers assess pupils understanding through marking and feedback and verbal communication. Teachers then assess if pupils have met the lesson objective and success criteria and then act appropriately through small group catch up, 1:1 support or an additional lesson on a skill.

Independent writing is assessed through the completion of writing indicators and ‘Writing Passports’, which inform the pupil of their next steps required to become more successful writers. This information is used to inform, differentiate and support planning to ensure pupils understanding, knowledge and skills are taught effectively.