Intent

At Maltby Lilly Hall, it is our intent for all pupils to be able to confidently express their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. Writing tasks are given a clear purpose and audience linking to the wider curriculum topics being studied as well as the class novel. We aim to develop writers who write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Through quality first teaching, we aspire for pupils to acquire a wide vocabulary that they use with confidence. Not only do we want our children to leave us with a love of writing but with the ability to express themselves effectively in a variety of ways.

Implementation

During English sessions and through the wider curriculum, we provide children with opportunities to write in a wide range of genres and styles. Our structured approach to teaching writing throughout school supports children in their development of writing skills. The writing process incorporates analysing a piece of writing for key conventions, modelling and shared writing and guided writing to produce a written task. This then culminates in the children independently producing a piece of writing, which aims to encompass all the skills learnt. Explicit links are made when teaching writing to appropriate spelling, grammar and punctuation relating to the genres and styles being studied. Within lessons, teachers and teaching assistants target support for lower ability pupils to enable them to achieve at an age-related level wherever possible. This may involve a greater level of scaffolding and access to additional support materials such as Writers Toolkits, Word Banks or a greater level of modelling. Children are given the opportunities to plan, edit, redraft and publish work on a regular basis so they understand the elements of a writer’s process and the importance of expressing themselves. Our intention is for pupils to leave our school being able to use fluent, legible and joined handwriting. Spelling is taught through the RWI spelling programme which is taught from year 2 onwards daily. Weekly spellings are set using this programme to learn at home with parental support. As a catch-up programme, some children are set individualised spellings catering for their needs. Vocabulary is explicitly taught throughout school with key vocabulary displayed on topic boards for children to familiarise themselves with. Each classroom has a specific, interactive vocabulary display which is updated weekly with a key word/words studied that week generated from the class novel or topic work. Words are explored (definition, image, synonyms, antonyms) and placed in the context of a sentence by children. To further develop our children’s writing skills, we ensure writing is used as a media to express knowledge, ideas and emotions across the curriculum linked to topic work and not just confined to writing lessons.

Impact

Writing is well planned and is linked specifically to the current topic or class novel. Planning includes a wide range of genres and children have opportunities to produce extended pieces of writing on a regular basis. These are celebrated through high quality display and through assemblies and communication with parents. Notebook planning is used through school to ensure learning is tailored on a day-to-day basis. Assessment is ongoing throughout every lesson to aid teachers with their planning, lesson activities, targeted pupil support and to enable appropriate challenge to all children. Writing assessment grids are used to ensure clear tracking and monitoring of progress. Pupils are given regular feedback and next steps to respond to in order to personalise learning and provide opportunities to edit and improve their own writing. School improvement leaders closely monitor all pupil’s books and hold pupil progress meetings with all teachers to assess every individual child’s learning needs and progress. Pupil voice is used to enable leaders to assess the impact of writing across the curriculum and moderation on a regular basis ensures consistency of both approach and standards.