Intent

At Skelton Primary School, we believe that every child, regardless of their starting point, should develop the skills and confidence to see themselves as successful writers. Our aim is to provide children with a stimulating and engaging writing curriculum, which embraces children’s interests and allows them to flourish and foster a love of English. It is important to us that children understand the value of English and the importance of this core subject in the world beyond the classroom. It is our role to show children that reading, writing, speaking and listening are explicitly linked; that skills obtained in these areas are transferrable and underpin the entire National Curriculum. Above all, it is our purpose to provide children with a love of English.

Implementation 

Writing – Transcription 

Handwriting  

At Skelton we follow the Read Write Inc handwriting model. This is a four-stage handwriting development programme that begins with children learning the shape of letters that they can read. Children then learn the relative sizes of letters before learning how to join using two distinct joins that will establish a fluent and legible style. 

Spelling  

At Skelton we have a bespoke Spelling curriculum that requires the children to learn spelling rules rather than learning lists of words. Children establish an understanding of graphemes through their learning in Phonics, which is a skill that they can utilise when learning the spelling rules so that they can accurately spell new words. 

Writing Composition 

Features of writing in the Foundation Stage: 

Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage follow a curriculum based on reaching the Early Learning Goals through a progression of skills taken from the Development Matters and Birth to Five documentation. In the pre-writing stage, opportunities are provided for children to develop their fine motor skills and hand strength to support the physical dexterity to write with purpose and intention through child-initiated play and focused adult-led sessions.  

Alongside the physical aspect of writing, children are supported to develop their Communication, Language and Literacy skills so they develop the oral composition (recounts, storytelling and instructions) and language structure for writing. Emergent writers use knowledge of letters and words to make phonetically plausible attempt in writing. The stimulus for writing often comes through children’s play and through the ‘message centre’ focus sessions.    

The Read, Write Inc phonic and reading programme equips children with the phonic knowledge to apply to their writing. This continues into KS1 and into KS2 when necessary.  

Features of writing in Key Stage One and Two: 

All children in KS1 and KS2 have a daily writing lesson. It will often coincide and complement reading teaching/skills. Writing will also be exhibited through other subjects such as Big Ideas and Science. This allows our children to keep practising and consolidating their acquired skills in a cross-curricular manner. 

The writing process at Skelton follows a distinct path. In each writing unit children will explore an example text (which we call A WAGOLL – What A Good One Looks Like) before immersing into the genre/text type. The teacher will then guide the children through the planning of their writing before a shared write that highlights the importance of grammatical features and vocabulary choices. The children will then independently write their own text and implement edits and redrafts as they work. 

Impact 

In order to effectively design tasks it is imperative that the classroom teacher understands fully the success that pupils have had with their learning. We use our purpose built App to track skills progress across Writing. 

It is worth noting that we define success in our curriculum beyond the assessment of the foundation subjects. We also look to build self –belief and respect so that all children develop a sense of self-worth. We hope to see the children realise new skills and find new interests and talents along their learning journey. 

If you would like to know more about our Writing curriculum, please email office@skeltonprimaryschoool.co.uk