English - Writing

Intent – What we are trying to achieve?

• Ensure all children have access to and experience a high-quality, vocabulary-enriching curriculum, that is both challenging and enjoyable.

• Provide our children with a variety of writing opportunities linked to different genres, audiences and purposes, allowing for a breadth of knowledge, understanding and skills.

• Build children’s breadth and depth of higher-level vocabulary and equip them with the knowledge and skills to integrate this effectively.

• Teach and embed children’s knowledge and understanding of grammatical structures to memory which enables them to retain and successfully write for a range of purposes across their school curriculum.

Implementation – How will we achieve this?
6 Step Writing Sequence

Immerse: This section is to activate the children’s background knowledge, allow them to make connections with any previous learning or understanding that may help and to ensure the children are excited and fully engaged with the genre/text type. In this section children will be taught and use in context key tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary. The purpose (what is being written) and intended audience (who it is being written for) should be made clear. 

Analyse: This gives the children time to study any model/example texts in detail as a collective. Pupils highlight key genre specific features and identify the success criteria which they need to do further work on to allow success in their writing. 

SPaG: Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar ensures the children are taught specifics for their independent write so they can confidently use a variety of grammar and spelling activities that link with the model text and success criteria. 

Plan: The aim is that a range of planning techniques are modelled to the pupils and as they progress through the year/school they choose their own planning format which works for them and that particular text type. 

Write: The aim of this section of the sequence is that through the previous sessions within the unit, pupils are fully immersed in all the success criteria and can confidently apply this to their own, independent writing. 

Review: In the review section, the intent is they are able to reflect on their own and others’ work. The aim is they develop their proofreading and editing skills, enabling them to produce the most accurate piece of writing possible. 

Working Walls: Teachers prepare working walls as a visual stimulus for children to refer to and use during the writing sequence. The working walls help children to foster independence by choosing, using and editing group ideas and vocabulary, showcase the sequence in which successful writing is completed and display key vocabulary.

Vocabulary Build: Through modelling and sharing of ideas, children will become successful in building and then using a bank of vocabulary specific to the writing genre. The children will be expected to use a variety of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary within their independent pieces.

Tier 1 words are the everyday words encountered in daily conversation, eg dog, go, happy, play, walk, sad. These usually do not need to be specifically taught. 

Tier 2 words are those that provide access to more complex topics and discussions outside of the everyday, eg relative, vary, frown, swoop, hesitate. 

Tier 3 words are those which are relevant for a specific subject or content area and what we would often call "topic words", eg global warming, astronaut, emissions, World War 2, rationing.

Whole Class Teaching: Teaching as a whole class allows children of all abilities and backgrounds to immerse and build vocabulary, sharing ideas and thoughts throughout the writing sequence which enables every child to succeed and meet the same common objective.

Revisiting Writing Genres: Teachers plan to revisit previously taught writing sequences allowing children to apply the writing skills for that genre again which matches the school’s definition of learning. By revisiting genres and features, children are able to quickly recall previous learning, thus interrupting the forgetting, and encouraging knowledge to be retained and transfer into their long-term memory.

Marking and Feedback: The purpose of marking and feedback is to identify and address misconceptions quickly which allows them to make progress within lessons. The children are most responsive to individual live marking and feedback and whole class marking which gives them immediate feedback to act upon within a lesson. Post lesson marking celebrates strengths of the piece and identifies next steps to be acted upon if appropriate.

Impact – What difference will this make?

At Clowne Junior School, we aim to teach and equip children with the necessary knowledge and skills, vocabulary and confidence to write independently for a range of audience and purposes. Throughout each writing sequence, children will be encouraged to choose vocabulary and grammatical structures independently, write for a particular genre and purpose and then edit and review their work to increase accuracy and effect. Finally, children will revisit previously taught grammar structures, text types and genre features through overlearning and be able to demonstrate their retention and application through end of term assessments. We believe that, when Children leave Clowne Junior School, they will be equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to effectively continue their English and writing curriculum and secondary school and beyond.

Grammarsaurus - Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar

How to help promote a love of writing at home

Handwriting at Clowne Junior School

At Clowne Junior School, we promote, teach and use fully cursive handwriting.

This follows Clowne Infant School's scheme.

Below is an example of each letter and how it would join and be written.

Spelling at Clowne Junior School

Here are '20 Ways To Spell' to help the children learn their spellings.

These are stuck in the children's spelling journals and are used regularly within school.

It was wonderful to see lots of parents, carers and grandparents this week in our two writing workshops (Tuesday 16th January & Wednesday 17th January). The purpose of the workshops was to inform parents on the importance of writing; to explain how we teach writing at Clowne Junior School and to give advice on how they can support their children and promote a love of writing at home. Mrs Bond (Writing Lead) gave a presentation in the hall sharing Clowne Junior School's approach to writing and sharing useful tips and resources. After the presentation, parents, carers and grandparents went into the year group classrooms to observe the children being taught writing and support them in their lesson.

The feedback from the mornings was really positive and everyone (including teachers and pupils) found it an enjoyable and valuable experience.