Intent

At St John’s we believe that all pupils should be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. We want pupils to acquire a wide vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn. We want them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a good, joined, handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process.

Implementation

• Writing is taught as whole-class lessons, focusing on a text from our exciting English scheme the ‘Literacy Tree’. This well-planned resource focuses on a culturally diverse range of texts and has aspirational targets for writing. It also covers all the learning objectives in the National Curriculum (2014).
• To ensure coverage, we use the National Curriculum’s ‘Year Group At A Glance’ documents which teachers highlight as lessons progress.
• Writing toolkits are used to focus the children’s attention on the next vital steps for them and they are given an opportunity to reflect on what they have learned.
• Gaps analysis from previous summative tests also inform planning.
• In the EYFS, staff teach and develop the emergent skills of our young writers with an emphasis on fine motor control, letter formation, posture and making solid links between sound, grapheme and writing of letters. Many opportunities for early writing are provided by the Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) phonics scheme and by our creative staff focusing on authentic reasons to make marks/write.
• Following on from EYFS, the Literacy Tree scheme ensures that all genres are covered and does so in an engaging and challenging way, enabling children to develop their operational writing skills, vocabulary, handwriting and creativity.

• Feature Days such as World Book Day and National Poetry Day provide further opportunities to write creatively and hone writing skills.
• Dictionaries, word mats, thesauruses etc are available in classrooms, where necessary, to support children’s learning.
• Reading and writing is widely promoted across the school and our classrooms have display boards which children can utilise to support their learning and present their own work for others to enjoy and admire.
• PDMs enable leads to share information and provide ongoing support for members lacking experience in certain year groups or genres.

Extra opportunities will be provided for children to use their writing skills in topic lessons in extended writing pieces.

Impact

This will be measured by:

• Progress of children in end of year/half-termly assessments.
• Beginning and end-of-year whole school assessment tasks to ensure progression between year groups and for the individual.
• Pupil Progress meetings to analyse writing standards.
• Monitoring of books.
• Subject Leaders monitoring planning, books and data.
• Ensuring that cross curricular links are made throughout the year.
• Providing training to ensure staff are supported and have relevant resources.

Most importantly – our children develop a love of writing which is revealed in many different contexts. They are supported to succeed and can use in context the word, sentence and text level skills they have learned in their writing lessons.