Approaches to Writing

Applying a 'mastery approach' to writing, in line with the writing objectives laid out in the national curriculum, secure the developmental building blocks of writing: vocabulary, gramma, sentence structure and paragraphing. Gramma is taught within lessons to help the children build up knowledge and apply in their own writing. 

Every year group will experience some form of writing daily. From Year 1 onwards, the children will have a daily writing lesson which should include the grammar the children will be focusing on for their unit of work. Children should revisit and edit their work to refine word- and sentence-level skills, and to develop coherence within and across paragraphs.

Specific skills are developed in relation to fiction and non-fiction pieces of work. It is expected that each year group will have access to a broad range of texts including non-fiction, fiction and poetry.  

We will measure the impact through learning walks, book looks, formative and summative assessment (through the use of assessed pieces of writing), and pupil/parent/teacher voice. Senior Leaders will evaluate the impact and assess pupils’ learning termly.

Sequences of Learning:

Within the sequence of learning, each class use 'incidental write', which will be assessed to identify the next steps in the learning process and teachers use this assessment to select the next sequence focus to be used in their class. 

Step 1: Engage deeply within the text before teaching begins. It is advised that teachers complete a writerly knowledge chart to fully understand the text they are teaching so they are clear about what the expectations will be for the final outcome. 

Step 2: Find out what your class already know with an elicitation task. 

Step 3: Once the elicitation task has been complete, the children will start learning about the text which will enable them to retell the story. 

Step 4: Practice writing and enable the children to adapt the text. Modelled writing is a key aspect of this step and should be clearly displayed as a step on your classroom display so children can refer to it.

Step 5: Independent writing which enable the children to create their own piece of writing.