St Laurence's Catholic Primary SchoolWriting at St Laurence's
English Curriulum Statement
(Writing)
Intent
At St Laurence’s Primary School, we believe that fostering a love of writing from the moment our children start nursery is at the core of enabling them to become masterful writers. This mastery equips them with an invaluable tool for self-expression as they move through school and beyond. Linked with our belief that reading is the bedrock of a child’s gateway into a world beyond their own, purposeful writing - and the enjoyment of its creation - enables our children to give voice to these worlds within their imagination. Writing at St Laurence’s is embedded across our curriculum rather than occurring just within English lessons. Children are exposed to a range of text types through a range of subjects and our Reading Spine celebrates not just exposure to literature through ‘Power of Reading’, but also the many and varied writing opportunities that arise through these.
Implementation
At St Laurence’s we ensure that the teaching of writing is robust with clear progression for all children. Through using a wide range of quality texts, the children are exposed to inference, high-level and rich vocabulary, a range of punctuation and how meaning can be manipulated through grammar. In line with the National Curriculum, we ensure that each year group is being taught the explicit grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives required. Skills are then embedded throughout the year in cross-curricular writing opportunities, ensuring that most children are achieving the objectives within the expected level. As purposeful writing is encouraged, children have the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. This enables teachers to not only identify children with the potential to work at the Greater Depth level in Years 2 and 6, but provides them with the opportunities to hone their skills through meaningful and regular practice. Assessment of writing is fluid as teachers assess writing once per half term, against moderation criteria created by the Writing Lead and reviewed as a staff. There is regular collaboration in year groups and as a whole staff which ensures confidence in judgements across the school.
EYFS and Year 1
Our EYFS children are exposed to many different writing opportunities in Nursery and Reception with writing skills being built up from a basis of fine and gross motor control into being able to write a variety of sentences with different structures by the end of Reception. Children enjoy writing opportunities both discretely and through their continuous provision areas and stories, songs and real-life experiences are always used as a stimulus for this. Within our Early Years Foundation Stage setting, children are exposed regularly to examples of real-life writing for purpose. They get opportunities to practice mark-making within role play areas and guided groups which is the perfect introduction to writing as a tool for communication in every aspect of our society. A typical discrete writing lesson will take place as a small, teacher-led guided group with plenty of discussion and oral practice before constructing sentences together. This, alongside regular immersion in story and text-based learning through Power of Reading, ensures that our Early Years and Year 1 children are given every opportunity to experience and practice reading into writing and experience-based writing at an age-appropriate level. This, in turn, fosters a love of literacy which can then be built upon in Year 2. We also encourage children to write across the curriculum. By the end of Year 2 we hope most children will be writing some paragraphs to express their thoughts on learning. By the end of Year 1 we aim for this writing to work up to full coherent sentences by summer term. In pushing this within other areas of the curriculum we believe we are giving our children extra opportunities to express themselves in areas outside of literacy. In St Laurence’s, we know that some children are disadvantaged in terms of early speech and language skills, and so we use a ‘Language of Sentence Structure’ document to ensure all our teachers are exposing children – from EYFS through to Year 6 with age-appropriate language in terms of the breakdown of sentences into units of information. This is particularly prudent in upskilling our disadvantaged and SEND children in their understanding of how to form sentences – first in speech, and later on in their writing. Through doing this regularly in literacy lessons from the moment children enter school, we are ensuring all our children are given solid groundwork in understanding the necessities in the structuring of language. This groundwork is then built upon as the children progress through KS1 and 2 with the teaching of grammar through curriculum objectives.
Years 2-6
Once children have been taught the basics of structuring sentences as units of information, they are then introduced to a range of grammatical structures and punctuation objectives within each year group in line with the National Curriculum. Through their constant exposure to varied texts, alongside this discrete teaching of objectives, children move through their journey to becoming fluent, expressive and creative writers with the stamina to write across a range of genres and for a range of purposes. As with all our teaching and learning at St Laurence’s, immersing children in a rich language environment across all subjects supports them with their ‘talk’ for the writing process: they move through a sequence of steps such as discussion, drama and empathising with characters which provides them with the preparation necessary for an accomplished piece of writing. This in turn supports our whole-school intent as we push vocabulary within all areas of the curriculum. Our learners from Year 3 onward express themselves through writing across the whole curriculum as t We use the Power of Reading to ensure that children are able to navigate their way through this process as enthusiastic and confident writers. This daily diet of reading provides children with an understanding of how language works, the information it contains and the many ways that this can be delivered and manipulated. It also empowers teachers with solid guidance on choosing the books and curriculum best suited to inspiring young writers – giving them access to a huge range of recommended texts in different styles, genres and from different cultures. Teachers are constantly working together to review the success of texts and writing taught – assessing the children’s response and engagement and reflecting on lessons and the impact these have had on writing. Due to this, we are confident in our provision of up to date, suitably challenging texts and writing stimuli that are personalised to the needs of each class and year group.
SEND & Disadvantaged Provision
At St Laurence’s we aim to supporting SEND and disadvantaged pupils in writing as this is essential for promoting inclusivity and ensuring all children meet National Curriculum objectives. Tailored interventions, such as small group guided writing and 1:1 instruction where appropriate, help these pupils develop essential skills in structuring their writing, as well as the supported generation of ideas which can be particularly useful for children with Speech and Language difficulties who may otherwise struggle to communicate and process their thoughts. This intervention builds upon our RWI phonics programme by encouraging children to use and develop their reading skills in order to plan and structure their writing. We track our SEND children’s gaps in writing through diagnostic marking of extended writing. This is tailored to pin point specific children and groups so that gaps are identified swiftly and targeted teaching and intervention is planned into daily literacy teaching and intervention accordingly.
Our bottom 20% are tracked within each class and complete daily 1:1 reading intervention and this is further reflected on by teachers during the teaching of writing with daily reading stimuli in literacy lessons adapted accordingly so that they can be accessed by all children. Teachers and TAs consolidate this work through shared reading regularly in literacy lessons which exposes all children to the texts used for writing.
All teachers ensure elements of speaking and listening are included in our writing lessons where possible to promote the generating of ideas early on in the planning stage of writing. Children are supported in this speaking and listening stage with 1:1 and small group intervention where appropriate with a link here to shared reading. Regular summative assessments in writing, alongside the more formative diagnostic marking of extended writing, ensures progress is monitored, and teaching strategies are adjusted as needed. This approach fosters a culture of achievement and resilience for our learners. As teachers we work closely with our SEND lead and have all produced documentation to showcase our detailed provision (please see supporting document for further breakdowns of examples of quality first teaching to support these learners.)
Impact
Our Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling curriculum ensures the progression of writing is continuous across Key Stages, with clear expectations of how an Expected Level piece of writing should look in each year group. We monitor this as an English team and as a whole staff – ensuring that objectives are covered thoroughly with plenty of opportunity for the children to practice these both in a guided and independent manner often. Our school GPS Tracker shows how these grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives are broken down within year groups over each term, with teachers feeding back to the Literacy lead regularly about placement of objectives covered across the year. Writing and GPS are monitored regularly through checks on work-based evidence in books.
Ultimately, the impact we aim to have through our delivery of a rich writing curriculum is that, as they move on from us to further their education, we have given our children the tools they will need to confidently continue to develop their skills of self-expression and communication. This confidence in their own abilities will drive their creativity, passion for English and high aspirations for their own achievement. Writing allows freedom of expression and enables our children to become self-aware, confident communicators. Through our thorough teaching of the mechanics of writing alongside our robust text exposure and exploration, we are giving our children the gift of being able to channel their creativity and opinions in written form; we are helping them to make sense of their own thoughts and feelings and the impact they can have on both the world around them and their own futures.