All teachers follow the school long term plan to ensure a balance of writing genres, both narrative, non-fiction and poetry, over a Key Stage. This has been planned to ensure it is progressive, building on skills from year to year, as well as ensuring balanced coverage of the main genres. Units will take between three and four weeks to complete, and the outcome of each unit will be an extended piece of writing (expert outcome) which will be used to assess the pupil’s skills against the agreed success criteria. All narrative units are linked to a carefully chosen text that acts as a stimulus for teaching the identified text, word and sentence level features that children will be expected to include in their extended writing outcome for that unit.  Non-fiction units are usually taught through a ‘hook’ which is used to foster the children’s interest in writing and offer a reason and context for writing which gives children a clear purpose and audience for their writing. A high quality WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) is used early in the teaching sequence to support pupils to identify and mimic the identified features in their own writing. As part of our progressive long term plan, we teach children to imitate and innovate writing before becoming independent writers with their own writing style. Shared and modelled writing is a key part of each teaching sequence as this provides the opportunity to model how to incorporate taught grammar and punctuation skills as well as the application of high quality vocabulary to a sustained piece of writing.  Throughout the writing process, children are explicitly taught the skills of editing and redrafting and they are supported in their development of these skills developing their understanding that an initial piece of writing can always be improved further.

Grammar and Punctuation skills are taught through English lessons wherever possible. Teachers plan to teach specific skills within their teaching sequences, linking it to the genre to make clear connections with the intended writing outcome.  On occasions, teachers may choose to teach specific grammar and punctuation skills as stand-alone lessons if they feel that the class need additional lessons to embed and develop their understanding or to consolidate skills. 

Spelling forms a key element of the teaching in Read Write Inc phonics lessons. Children are taught how to use ‘Fred fingers’ to break down words into their individual sounds to assist spelling.  Teachers will remind children of this spelling approach in their daily English lessons and support children in using it to make phonetically plausible attempts at the spelling of unfamiliar words. From year two upwards, spelling is taught twice a week as stand-alone lessons in which spellings are taught according to the rules and words contained in Appendix 1 of the English National Curriculum. Teachers use resources from the No-nonsense Spelling Scheme to support them in planning and sequencing learning. When marking work, teachers identify age or ability appropriate spellings which children have mis-spelt and it is expected that these will be corrected by the child the next lesson.

Handwriting is taught as part of Read Write Inc phonics in Foundation Stage and Key Stage one. Correct letter formation is always modelled first by the practitioner using the handwriting phrase and then children are given time to practise this formation before reviewing their efforts. From year one upwards, children are also taught handwriting through stand-alone lessons. These provide further time to practise and consolidate the formation of letters which are not yet secure. These sessions follow the same structure as that used in Read Write Inc sessions.  Children do not start to learn a cursive style of handwriting until the formation and sizing of their letters is correct. This is usually in year two but this depends on the ability of the individual child. 

By the time children leave Canon Peter Hall, we strive for our children to be confident, creative writers who have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.  They will be able to write with grammatical accuracy and be able to apply spelling patterns correctly using a neat handwriting style. Through the use of a clearly sequenced and progressive long term plan and a consistent approach to teaching writing, children acquire writing skills that they can apply to cross curricular writing manipulating their grammar and punctuation skills dependent on the genre and intended audience. 

How will we know the intent and implementation of our writing curriculum is effective?

• Reviews of planning
• Visiting lessons
• Reviewing pupil books
• Reviewing expert outcome
• Meeting with pupils to evaluate if they are remembering more of the most powerful writing skills we have identified as the key intentions of each writing unit.