Compassion, Courage, Justice

Jesus said, "Go and do the same."

 

Writing – Intent Statement 

Monkton Church of England Primary School believe that writing is a key skill for life both inside and out of education and that is why it features across all the subjects taught within our school. Our aim is to provide children with key transferrable writing skills to build on year on year, that can be used throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for the next step in their education, secondary school. 

Teaching children to write for a range of purposes and audiences can be very exciting;  at Monkton we provide children with a range of engaging hooks to capture their imagination! We aim to provide the children with varied reasons for writing and believe that this not only produces higher quality writing, but allows our learners to apply their skills to a range of different contexts. 

Writing across all subject areas will prepare our children for secondary school and the more in-depth approach to analysing, planning and innovating their writing. 

Oracy is prioritised in our writing curriculum in order to build vocabulary for all learners and increase understanding of trickier texts used across our curriculum. Discussion, questioning are actively encouraged. Our aim is for ALL learners to achieve their full potential in writing and we are committed to providing the scaffolds, opportunities and challenge needed in order for our children to achieve this. 

Writing – Implementation Statement 

Children receive a minimum one hour Literacy lesson daily and are exposed to age-related expectations for writing within a range of texts. Writing and reading are closely linked and we ensure that children are reading daily in order to build on their knowledge of different genres of writing and develop their vocabulary.  

A high standard of joined, cursive handwriting is modelled across school, although children are more formally introduced to this in KS2. Handwriting is taught and practised regularly in separate books but is expected to be evidenced throughout all work produced. 

Spellings are set weekly by class teachers with children tested the following week. Children in years 2-6 will follow the Non Nonsense Spelling programme, with children in Reception and Year 1 following Little Wandle Phonics. Due to the impact of Covid upon learning, children from years 2 and 3, with a few from the children in the upper Key Stage, will also be following the Little Wandle programme in order to address gaps in learning and support their spelling and reading.  

Teachers demonstrate high quality modelling within each Literacy lesson and encourage children to include key vocabulary (linked to their Topic), challenging vocabulary (Magpie books, words of the day and week) structure their work appropriately into coherent paragraphs and use the grammatical skills and punctuation taught at their year group level. 

The use of a WAGOLL is often used as an example of how to be successful at the start of each unit of work. This provides children with both an end goal and a structure and template for achieving this. We also use writing purpose sheets which act as prompts and enable children to self-evaluate their own writing.  

Monkton aims to develop writing as a transferrable skill across all subjects taught in the curriculum. We therefore immerse children in a creative curriculum through Cornerstones, this affords children with a greater range of cross-curricular writing opportunities.  Our aim is to provide engaging writing hooks that are linked to each termly topic to give children an audience and purpose for writing. Children are expected to transfer their key topic knowledge and vocabulary into their writing and vice versa to transfer their spelling, grammar and punctuation knowledge into their topic work. We expect the high standards for writing in Literacy lessons to be evident within the work in all books. Teacher marking and feedback supports this high expectation.  

Children are encouraged to deconstruct texts and identify key features for specific genres of writing. Teachers model the practising of these skills and children then apply them to their own writing. This ability to identify specific features we believe is a key skill across both reading and writing and will improve comprehension in children.  

As a school, we aim to ensure that children are aware of their strengths and areas for development in writing so that learners can take ownership of their progress. Teachers leave next steps in books when marking or through verbal feedback within lessons, to ensure that children know exactly what they need to do next to make progress in their writing and children are encouraged to respond to this in green pen. We ensure that ALL learners are given next steps and that scaffolds and challenges are put in place for those children working below or above age-related outcomes. 

Children who are identified as not achieving age-related outcomes and/or those on the SEND register may be assessed against the outcomes for the year group below. Daily or weekly interventions/support may be put in place in order to accelerate writing skills in this case. The nature of the intervention will be decided by the teacher and the SENDCO. Support in class may include small group work with an adult during lessons to model key skills, scaffolds created by the teacher to assist with completion of work and word banks/sentence openers provided to assist the child when writing. 

Writing – Impact Statement 

Assessment in writing is ongoing as teachers carry out in-depth assessment of children’s writing at the end of extended piece of writing, recorded in Gold books.  

Children are tested termly on spelling, grammar and punctuation knowledge (Rising Stars Assessments) and this data is used to inform next steps for writing. Children are also set and tested weekly on a set of spellings appropriate to their stage.  

Assessment and progress are tracked through Arbor, which is then used to analyse gaps in children’s knowledge and gain an overview of specific groups of children across school. 

Progress across classes is closely monitored by the subject leader and senior leadership team. Monitoring will include: regular book looks, lesson observations or drop ins, gathering evidence of good practice, pupil voice interviews, looking at data and learning walks. The findings of this monitoring will be used to inform next steps for the children and the implementation of writing across the school as a whole. 

Our long term aims for pupils are: 

• to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and to be able to use discussion to communicate and further their learning 

• to be able to read fluently both for pleasure and to further their learning. 

• to enjoy writing across a range of genres 

• for pupils of all abilities to be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately scaffolded 

• for our pupils to have a wide vocabulary and be adventurous with vocabulary choices within their writing 

• to have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience 

• to leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught 

•to make good and better progress from their starting points to achieve their full potential 

 

2023-2024 Writing Skills Progression Cycle A

 

 

2022-2023 Writing Skills Progression Cycle B