Our Writing Curriculum
Our Curriculum Intent
Our writing curriculum is embedded securely and consistently across the school. From the planned experiences for early mark-making in our Nursery setting, our pupils begin their writing journey with well-sequenced opportunities that progress across learning opportunities, genres, year groups and key stages.
Children learn within rich classroom environments which are designed to reflect a varied and diverse reading curriculum. Texts, animations, lyrics and enrichment experiences are the roots of children’s writing stimulus, allowing them to become authors in different contexts and for different purposes. When exposing children to age-appropriate stimuli, conscious decisions are made to interweave genres and content which address and celebrate cultural diversity. Our pupils are taught to address and respond to a variety of audiences and to the cultures, values, knowledge and feelings of others, to have respect for each other’s individual liberty and to show tolerance of alternative points of view.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary forms the blueprint of our writing curriculum. A writing lesson in our school is planned to include intentional teaching of specific vocabulary. Learners have the opportunity to acquire, understand the meaning and nuances of new vocabulary and practice using and applying it. Language is brought to the children for discussion and modelling and used as a catalyst for exploration and expansion of pupils’ own vocabulary.
We develop a school community of writers in which our pupils find they can learn from each other’s cultural capital. They use an authentic, authorial voice to share knowledge, opinion, creativity and imagination. We promote writing as a communication tool in all these voices across all curriculum subjects.
Spelling
Our writing curriculum is upheld by a hypothesis-driven approach to teaching spelling. From an early age, children are writing and experimenting with phonetically plausible attempts to build words. As they grow and progress, our pupils rely on hypotheses about phonetic relationships and sound spelling correspondences. Our pupils are taught and guided to become skilful and adaptable when writing, including how they plan, draft, revise, edit, publish and perform their writing intentions.
The Purpose Of Our English Curriculum
We develop children who are …
1. Fluent, habitual readers who read for both pleasure and knowledge acquisition;
2. Able to acquire and build a rich and varied vocabulary and utilise their language skills to frame conversations and discussions across a range of purposes and audiences;
3. Authors in different contexts across different purposes and who make conscious decisions to weave in grammatical devices;
4. Constantly developing their understanding of phonics to support reading and underpin spelling and understand relationships between meaning and spelling;
5. Able to refine their conscious control and choice of language, noting and experimenting with its use in reading, writing and speaking.
Modelling writing - showing children how to rely on phonic knowledge to record their spoken ideas.
Writing is taught based on model texts which gives context and purpose to pupils' writing.
Our Curriculum Offer - What We Teach In Writing
The Grappenhall Heys writing curriculum is vast and encompasses all year groups from Nursery to Year 6. The writing curriculum is mapped across year groups and key stages to ensure breadth of coverage and depth of knowledge and skill acquisition.
Each year group has clear end points, formed from threshold concepts, that set out the knowledge which, when grasped, will allow pupils to progress on their curriculum journey. Its creation comes following close consultation with staff and sets the end points for each cohort’s knowledge acquisition and ensures that pupils have the skills to meet learning expectations.
Knowledge for each year group is broken down into end points which give clarity to what every pupil should achieve and evidence, at termly assessment points.
From this, medium-term plans are devolved. They give in depth coverage into the breakdown of teaching in each year group. Genre coverage is derived directly from the reading spine. Punctuation, grammar and spelling objectives are explicitly taught as part of the composition and transcription of writing. These skills are a critical component of our Early Years and Key Stage 1 and feed into learning beyond teaching early writing. in KS2 Extensive and deliberate practice follows direct instruction and modelling to enable children to become fluent writers.
Knowledge is displayed in the learning environment in the form of working walls in every classroom. Working like large knowledge organisers, these wall displays serve as a model for class teacher and pupil writing models. Further mapping of a text model is also displayed to map out a whole written piece, to compile pupil ideas and to give structure to writing foci.
EYFS
In EYFS, writing is introduced as a way children can communicate and express themselves. Varied and meaningful opportunities are provided for children to experiment with purpose for writing alongside daily phonics lessons which teach phonemes as graphemes so that children can make accurate or phonemically close choices when they spell.
Children explore a rich environment, both indoors and out, carefully designed multi-sensory approach to build their physical strength and control in the core, upper body, hands and fingers through daily gross and fine motor skill activity. A diverse offer of both informal and formal writing opportunities allow children to believe confidence and self-esteem in mark making and communicating in their early independent writing.
Flourished with the confidence and opportunity to speak to adults and their peers in their increasingly familiar school setting, children are explicitly taught listening skills to enable them to develop oracy skills. When children begin talking and listening to ideas generated through collaborative discussion it develops their imagination and self-expression modelling how to write down the words they say helps children to see how sounds become words on paper. It also allows them to convey their personal interests which are more likely to express in written form.
Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2
In Key Stage One, writing develops into a more formalised process. Driven by a progressive reading spine which exposes children to an age-appropriate range of genres, pupils are shown models for writing they are expected to replicate.
Talk about reading is stimulated between adults and children and between children and their peers. Where interest is gained and thinking is stimulated, pupils develop expressive vocabulary. Talk motivates imagination and gives a purpose or intent to writing.
Spelling is taught daily and builds upon phonemic awareness that is constructed in children's early phonic acquisition. Children are taught spelling based on this strong phonics teaching and with a focus on teaching pupils the connections between words, sound associations, etymology and patterns.
This allows children precision when they transcribe their thoughts into writing and when editing pupils adopt a careful approach to identifying how they can improve their writing for more effective reading by or to their audience.
Teaching and learning encompasses the English National Curriculum, ensuring the same, ambitious standard of education is offered to and accessible to all.
Writing Roadmaps have been produced to represent what the children will learn and the sequence in which they will learn it in each year group throughout the school.
An example of a long-term plan (LTP) for Writing is linked by clicking on the image below.
Texts are chosen from the Reading Spine as models for writing. End points are mapped onto the LTP to show how each text focus covers the genre and gives context and purpose for children's writing in each unit.
Writing medium-term plans (MTPs) are written from the Long Term Plan.
Our Curriculum Offer - How We Teach Writing
An English lesson at Grappenhall Heys will always begin with an opportunity to make learning links. Pupils will engage in an activity, enrichment, or opportunity to share knowledge from prior learning. The start of a lesson will always ensure that pupils access previously taught skills, concepts, vocabulary or knowledge and that their shared discussion ensures pupils recall and remember more.
From this point, the teacher sets clear success criteria (whether this is the end of one lesson or a sequence of lessons) and will then begin to deliver sequenced steps of teaching to meet these learning goals. Lesson instruction will always include a modelled example which will meet success criteria, Challenge is set by ‘deepening’ learning moments – often applying and retrieving from previous learning sequences or drawing on success criteria from earlier learning sessions or applying new vocabulary in context.
High expectations are set for all pupils and exceptional outcomes are achieved through scaffolds for teaching and for learning. Common misconceptions are pre-empted and addressed in teaching. Effective questioning allows teachers to make micro-adjustments to the lesson content to remove barriers and adapt teaching for all.
I do. We do. You do.
Modelling is at the heart of teaching and learning in English and places oracy as the primary catalyst for developing an effective and wide vocabulary vault for every pupil. As part of the writing process, working walls provide a permanent reference point for pupils to cite examples of their writing focus and as a focal point for language development which they have explored and developed on their writing journey.
Responsive Teaching
Teachers expertly weave common misconceptions into their teaching models to show common errors and to provide learning opportunities for understanding around why thinking is sometimes misconstrued. An example of this would be through the teaching of Tricky Words in Phonics. Children are encouraged to systematically identify the ‘tricky part’ of the word to embed for both word reading and later, spelling.
Linking Learning
Reading, writing, speaking and listening span the breadth of the curriculum, from Early Years to Year 6 and beyond. We prepare our pupils for the next stage of their education by teaching them to view the knowledge they acquire as not being isolated to its titular subject but as being linked across learning when teaching other curriculum subjects.
Feeding Forward
Lessons are structured to provide regular opportunities to recall, review and revisit prior learning. This is done with various temporal scales, whether across lessons, sequences of lessons or across year groups or key stages, where learning is designed in a spiral curriculum.
Ambition for All
Adaptations, such as providing coloured paper for children with visual processing difficulties, ensure that learning materials are accessible to all. When language barriers exist, the use of translators or interpreters may be used to help children access content and participate in the learning process effectively. We use catch-up and keep-up sessions to support learning. By tailoring and adapting our teaching and support methods, we create an inclusive learning environment that celebrates diversity and fosters success for all children.
What Makes Writing Special at Grappenhall Heys?
The writing curriculum at Grappenhall Heys goes beyond national curriculum expectations. Our end points meet aspirational threshold concepts and allow pupils to deepen their knowledge and understanding. From the Early Years Framework Early Learning Goals through to end of primary National Curriculum milestones, our pupils are provided with learning opportunities which deepen their understanding.
Our writing curriculum is designed to align with the procedures and practice of Jane Considine’s The Write Stuff approach to planning, teaching and assessing writing. Teachers follow the guiding principles when planning and delivering writing lessons. The Write Stuff aligns with our whole curriculum pedagogy of modelling being at the heart of teaching and learning and placing oracy as the primary catalyst for developing an effective and wide vocabulary vault for every pupil.
With vocabulary generation as a focal point of discussion, whether through an enrichment experience or through a model text, confidence is built in what is written in each piece. Modelling then helps pupils to gain an understanding of how the whole piece is written.
The Write Stuff has been adapted by curriculum leaders in conjunction with teachers who are specialists in teaching in their year group. We have a rationale for the adaptation of Jane Considine’s teaching model which ensures that our writing curriculum is designed for our pupils and fits with our whole school evidence-based approach to teaching and learning.
Our Pupil Voice
''I love using real life things to help me with my ideas in writing- we had a Stone Age box to help us with our learning." Year 3 child
Click here to learn about our English Pupil Voice
Our Curriculum Video
How Can You Find Out More?
To find out more about The Write Stuff approach to writing, you may wish to visit Jane Considine’s site here. It must be remembered that this approach is not a scheme. It is a system of teaching which advocates tools and structures which can be used to give pupils the knowledge and understanding of what to write and how to write it.
Our curriculum leaders have embedded The Write Stuff grammar and writing techniques, adapted to align with our unique reading spine and to enhance our exceptional curriculum offer in English.
