Writing

Writing at Good Shepherd

Intent

At Good Shepherd it is our aim to provide children with a high- quality English curriculum embedded with meaningful, memorable learning experiences.  We believe the ability to write is fundamental for our children to succeed in the next stage of their education and beyond. Through our ambitious curriculum we aim to ensure pupils not only enjoy writing, they are passionate and enthusiastic . We intend to provide them with skills that ensure they write coherently,  for different purposes and audiences; supported by  wide vocabulary and a solid understanding of grammar rules and terminology, appropriate for their age group. Our hope is for children to use their God given talent to express themselves creatively and enable them to communicate with others effectively.

Implementation

Writing at Good Shepherd is purposeful and follows the National Curriculum objectives where writing opportunities are linked and children are encouraged to apply skills acquired through writing across all subjects. A ‘Reading through to Writing’ approach is central to our writing curriculum: this allows pupils to be fully immersed in the plot, grammatical features and language of a text before they begin the writing process. Teachers plan writing units which encourage plenty of oracy – discussion, questioning, imitating and learning texts along with actions. The path for each writing outcome is adjusted to suit the needs of each class. Our curriculum is carefully scaffolded to ensure children are exposed to writing a wide variety of text types, for a range of purposes, and teaches grammar skills progressively and creatively, providing plenty of opportunities for consolidation.

Our children begin developing their transcription skills in EYFS, with gross motor activities and playful fine motor activities. When ready, they learn accurate letter formation, use hold a sentence activities and develop their own compositions, following the Talk for Writing process. Children in EYFS and KS1 learn to spell as part of their RWI phonics lessons where children use strategies such as ‘Fred Fingers’ to segment. On completion of the RWI programme, children use the Spelling Shed scheme, which follows the National Curriculum for spelling. This scheme includes an online homelearning element and children across the school enjoy the competition aspect, practising their spellings daily to accumulate points. A high standard of joined, cursive handwriting is modelled from Year 2 and children are encouraged to imitate this. Our handwriting policy is taught and practised regularly with children applying their learnt skills across the curriculum. Children, who are having difficulties with transcription are quickly identified and receive intervention for either fine motor skills or spelling.

Impact

Teachers assess children’s progress within the writing curriculum continuously and we use an on the spot marking approach where possible so that children receive immediate feedback and next steps. Children are assessed each term against our Romero Writing Trackers. Children take pride in both the presentation and the content of their writing and are eager to apply their writing skills across the curriculum, where children have numerous opportunities for writing with both a purpose and audience in mind. By the time children leave Good Shepherd, our pupils are confident and effective communicators. They will have amassed a varied vocabulary that they can use across the curriculum and can apply spelling rules and grammatical concepts in their work.