At Oakham C of E Primary School writing is a fundamental part of our curriculum. All children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum.
We want our children to develop a love for writing and see writing as a craft. We would like children to become skilled and proficient in the fluency of writing, encapsulating both grammar and sentence construction to then have the capacity in their writer’s toolkit to ‘take risks’ and to develop a passion and flair for writing. We want the children to see themselves as authors. We recognize that children need to develop their oracy skills to have the ideas and the confidence to become great writers.
We want children 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 throughout their time in primary school. 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 children should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a good, joined, cursive 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 our 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. We do not put ceilings on what pupils can achieve in writing and we do not hold pre-conceptions about any children’s ability to make progress.
Our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing. Writing is taught through a number of different strategies.
We have adopted a method called “Sentence Stacking” to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. Prior to the sequence of taught lessons, children are immersed into a high quality text through a variety of activities that are designed to provide a hook. This may include: role play, collaborative creativity or multi-sensory activities. The approach is organised into modelled ‘chunks’ of intensive moments of learning that the children can then immediately apply to their own writing. We believe that children need lots of rich speaking and drama activities to give them the imagination and the experiences that will equip them to become good writers and because oracy is so important we have adopted aspects of ‘Talk for Writing’ as part of our blended approach to writing in school.
We aim:
· To instil a passion for writing in all our learners.
· To understand that writing has a clear process including planning, editing, redrafting, publishing and performing.
· To equip children with the skills to be confident in communicating for a range of different purposes and audiences.
Our Writing Pathway
See below for our writing pathway. It outlines our writing statement of intent and the methodical nature of our teaching and learning offer to ensure that all of our children have the best opportunity to reach their potential in writing.
