Writing

Writing At New Moston Primary School

Intent

At New Moston, our aim is to provide children with key transferrable writing skills to build on year on year, that can be used throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for secondary school.

Teaching children to write for a range of purposes and audiences can be very exciting, especially here at New Moston, where we provide children with a range of engaging hooks and real experiences to capture their imagination! We aim to provide the children with varied reasons for writing and believe that this not only produces higher quality writing, but allows our learners to apply their skills to a range of different contexts.

Writing across all subject areas will prepare our children for high school and the more in-depth approach to analysing, planning and innovating their writing.

Oracy is prioritised throughout our writing curriculum in order to develop and build vocabulary for all learners and increase understanding of trickier texts used across our curriculum. Discussion, questioning and learning texts with actions all increase understanding and prepare our children with the tools they need in order to be successful in their writing.

Implementation

Children receive a one hour English lesson daily and are exposed to age-related expectations for writing within a range of texts. Writing and reading are closely linked and we ensure that children are reading daily in order to build on their knowledge of different genres of writing and develop their vocabulary. All classes follow a writing cycle which encourages plenty of oracy and vocabulary work followed by reading into writing. The children are given opportunities to edit and redraft their learning before producing final drafts.

Teachers demonstrate high quality modelling within each English lesson and encourage children to include key vocabulary, structure their work appropriately into coherent paragraphs and use the grammatical skills and punctuation taught at their year group level. The use of a WAGOLL is used as an example of how to be successful at the start of each unit of work. This provides children with an end goal. Children are encouraged to use this as a structure but also innovate their writing to make it their own. Teachers ensure that the standard of writing in the WAGOLL reflects the age-related outcomes for each specific year group.

Handwriting is taught explicitly as well as embedded throughout all lessons. We teach fine motor skills, gross motor skills as well as correct letter formation and cursive script to ensure our children are prepared and equipped with the skills to practise and produce a neat, legible and fluent style.

The importance of spelling is embedded throughout all of our writing at New Moston. Children create and access spelling lists, word mats and dictionaries to support spelling during independent composition. There is an expectation that children learn spelling patterns and rules at home in order to complete our weekly spelling tests.

Impact

Marking and feedback allows children to respond to teacher feedback and make instant progress or complete a targeted intervention based on their personal learning needs On-going formative assessment is evident in all writing sessions through verbal feedback and written evidence. Summative assessment occurs termly using Ros Wilson’s writing criteria. Accuracy is sustained through internal and external moderation.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar is assessed using: