Writing

At Veritas Primary Academy, writing is an integral aspect of our curriculum that enables children to develop and master the key skills that they need to apply across our creative curriculum. We strive to ensure that the children are provided with exciting, purposeful and inspiring contexts in which to become creative writers along with enrichment opportunities through our whole school topics that enable them to delve into the greater depths of their imaginations in order to stimulate and secure aspirational writing outcomes. We aim to ensure that there is coherence, continuity, mastery and progression within our teaching throughout the school.

Aims:

To foster a love of writing for the children by providing them with meaningful contexts for their learning.
To ensure that writing is planned effectively to achieve the best possible outcomes for all children.
To set clear learning objectives and success criteria’s for the children to strive to accomplish.
For teaching to show a positive and passionate attitude for writing to engage and enthuse the children.
To structure the writing units to follow a model which investigates, innovates, imitates and is applied through independent opportunities.
To teach and model to the children the key skills that they need in their writing and to apply them in different contexts through shared writing to ensure confidence and mastery that they can then apply in new contexts independently.
To encourage children to be investigators, thinkers, creators and reflectors.

In particular our teaching of writing will increase children’s abilities to:

Write imaginative, interesting and thoughtful texts
Produce texts which are appropriate to task, reader and purpose
Organise and present whole texts effectively, sequencing and structuring information, ideas and events
Construct paragraphs and use cohesion within and between paragraphs
Vary sentences for clarity, purpose and effect
Write with grammatical accuracy
Experiment with adventurous and effective vocabulary which are appropriate
Apply their understanding of phonics and spelling rules to all forms of writing

Developing writing in EYFS

Writing skills in EYFS begins through the children’s underpinned daily phonics. Here they are encouraged to rapidly write key words down during their spelling and phonic activities. Legible letter formation is encouraged through guided writing activities and through play. Furthermore, a wide variety of opportunities are provided for children to engage in writing activities and independently apply their phonic skills through role play, creative activities, computing and the outdoor area.

RWInc and phonics

In KS1, we use a RWInc scheme that is tightly structured to develop the children’s phonic knowledge and comprehension skills which then gives the children a strong foundation to turn their reading into quality writing. This is used alongside English lessons.

Writing model structure for KS1 and KS2

Across KS1 and KS2, our writing units follow a tightly structured planning sequence to ensure continuity, consistency, mastery and progression. The sequence is similar to the Pie Corbett’s talk for writing model which has been developed alongside our own adjustments to ensure the children are given opportunities to investigate, imitate, innovate and apply the taught skills that they have learnt independently within new contexts. Throughout this model, children are encouraged to reflect through teacher feedback, self and peer assessment, editing and making improvements to their work.