• Long term: National Curriculum forms the baseline for our long-term overviews, which is enhanced to meet the context of the pupils in the school. Progression documents are used to show the progression for all strands of writing across school and how the knowledge is built upon each term and each year for all pupils.
• Medium term: Class overviews (appendix 1), up-dated annually in response to changes made to texts and teacher feedback, data and in house monitoring of teaching & learning. Medium term plans are written for each unit to ensure progression of grammatical understanding and application into writing, (appendix 2).
• Short Term: Short term planning is supported by high quality texts.
• A typical writing lesson will provide the opportunity for all children, regardless of their ability, to:

1. Immerse themselves in high-quality, age-appropriate texts through daily reading lessons linked to their writing.
2. Opportunities for oracy to inspire pupils with new ideas and share these with others.
3. Teacher modelling of high-level sentence structures, vocabulary and grammatical features.
4. Model, inspire and use new vocabulary through the use of key word banks, shared writing and the support of dictionaries and thesauri.
5. Teaching has a SPAG focus to introduce embed grammar terminology in context; practise and application of grammatical structures and embedding these into writing.
6. Write creatively with support, guidance and independence in each unit.
7. Edit their writing through the use of checklist with increasing independence by reflecting on their learning and progress made during the lesson against a checklist.
8. Share their writing with others by reading them out and displaying them.

• Work is marked during the lesson (live marking) while children are supported orally and through extra modelling.
• Pupils who are working below their peers or struggling with a particular genre are provided with scaffolded tasks and are given the same opportunities to succeed; when needed they also receive same day interventions to address misconceptions or embed new learning. Scaffolding is also used for GD pupils who need a challenge in lessons.
• Those pupils who are working above their peers, and are confident in writing in different genres, are given varied opportunities to make their own writing choices by changing audiences, purposes, adding characters and demonstrating their flare for writing by linking their writing to their reading with more independence.

EYFS

Writing in the Foundation Stage aims to embed the early fundamentals of writing to ensure they are ready to progress into Key Stage One. Outcomes are taken from Development Matters objectives and exemplary guidance that the LA have produced, including Launch Pad Literacy. Areas of provision within the classroom support writing, ensuring children are able to access throughout the day to practise and develop skills being taught. In addition, consistent, daily writing lessons take the form of direct teaching, which is followed up by enhanced activities placed in areas of provision in the classroom which may be accessed independently or supported by an adult.

As children progress into Year One, the writing curriculum outcomes are designed to embed pupil’s knowledge of sentence composition and transcription. Lessons are designed with oracy at the pinnacle, enabling children to rehearse, practise and apply through dictated sentences and independent writing.

Reading  

(Please see our reading policy, see website)

Before each writing lesson, children will immerse themselves in a high-quality text, which lend themselves to carefully selected genres that the children are focussing on in their unit. During these sessions, students will listen to the text being read by the teacher, who models fluency, expression which fosters the love of reading. Children will participate in echo reading as a class; learn new and unfamiliar vocabulary and answer a range of questions based on VIPERS. Teachers model question types and provide plenty of opportunities to check understanding and correct misconceptions.

Knowledge check

At the beginning of each lesson, children recap previous learning, including grammatical knowledge and introduce new learning. AFL methods are used within lessons/units to ensure knowledge of grammatical features is retained. 

Throughout lessons, children will revisit previous knowledge of grammar and assessment for learning strategies (wave, whiteboard, talk partners, application in writing, etc) is used by the teaching team to ensure previous knowledge is embedded. Misconceptions will be addressed instantly to ensure all pupils make progress. Each lesson will provide opportunities for children to embed previous knowledge and grammatical skills into their writing and combine with the new knowledge outcome for the lesson.

Modelling

After introducing new skills and knowledge, the teacher models high quality writing, which allows children to see how the writer thinks through their ideas and builds sentences, choosing vocabulary with intent and purpose for an audience. Throughout this process, the teacher verbalises the author’s thinking and reflects on what they have written by re-reading their work out loud, editing where necessary to show that it is ok to make mistakes and a writer always has a chance to change their mind.  Modelling provides the opportunity for varied grammatical structures to be demonstrated and embedded as well as read out so children know ‘what a good one’ sounds like. Pre-planned misconceptions may be addressed and the use of success criteria may be used as an additional scaffold. In some lessons, shared writing is used so that teachers can use targeted questioning and give children opportunities to share their creative ideas and support others to write together. This supports children who struggle to think of ideas and gives all children an opportunity to participate.

Writing opportunities

Writing lessons follow our school’s non-negotiables (appendix 3)

Children have opportunities to write for a variety of different purposes and audiences throughout the year. Each unit build ups skills progressively, to allow children to embed the knowledge and skills of writing. This may be gathering vocabulary and building phrases and sentences; writing paragraphs to demonstrate a skill; practising a newly taught element of grammar and writing complete pieces with guidance, support or independently. Work can be scaffolded and differentiated to meet individual learner’s needs. At the end of each unit, teacher’s will set high expectations for children to write independently, edit, and publish their writing to their best. Children are encouraged to write with richness, drawing upon things they have read before or taught in a previous unit as models for their writing. Pupils identified as working at greater depth are given more ownership of their writing by allowing them the choice of genre and the change of additional features, such as the addition of characters, to enhance their piece with independence.

Reflect

All children are given the opportunity to reflect on their learning daily at the end of each lesson; focussing on their use of any new learning, basic skills and provides opportunity to re-read their writing to themselves or others so they can make amendments before handing in their work for feedback and assessment.  Children can edit in pairs, groups or independently. The feedback given by teachers can be verbal or written and allows staff to identify pupils who may need additional support towards that particular learning objective through the use of a same day intervention as well as inform future planning.

Same-Day Intervention (SDI)

Those who require additional support, will work with an adult and will have an intervention to address their misconceptions. This lasts for approximately 10-15 minutes.

Although this is a typical writing lesson, we know there are times when there needs to be flexibility within the lesson to meet the needs of groups or individual children, for example, mini plenaries throughout the lesson, oracy-based activities, drama and group work.

Equalities

All children at Thurgoland have an equal entitlement to access the curriculum and make progress in order to be their best self.

Inclusion

Subject leaders will work alongside SENCO and teachers to ensure that pupils with special educational needs, EHCPs and school focused plans will access the appropriate curriculum and reasonable adjustments will be planned and implemented by class teachers.

Where applicable children’s SEND paperwork will incorporate suitable objectives from the National Curriculum.

Intervention Groups will take place in order to give further support to children working below national expectations.

Greater Depth Children

Within lessons teachers provide activities to stretch and challenge children who demonstrate working at greater depth in writing. In some lessons, children will be provided with more advanced vocabulary, higher expectations of grammatical structures or more difficult application examples. Children who have been identified as writing above the expected standard, are also encouraged to write with richness, to draw upon things they have read before or taught in a previous unit as models for their writing. They are given more ownership of their writing by allowing them the choice of genre and the change of additional features, such as the addition of characters, to enhance their piece with independence. In addition, they will be editing their writing with more independence and be able to identify the need for editing with less support.