Writing

Teaching Writing at Our School
At our school, children begin their writing journey with Drawing Club in Reception, a creative and engaging approach that helps them develop their ideas and storytelling skills through drawing and discussion.

 As the children progress in KS1, we follow the Lancashire writing phased approach ensuring a clear progression of writing skills across the school. Each writing unit is carefully linked to the high-quality text, immersing the children in rich, high-quality texts that inspire their creativity and critical thinking in their independent writing. Through this phased approach, children develop their writing skills in a meaningful context, learning to craft a variety of genres (including fiction, non-fiction and poetry) and styles with confidence. This ensures that every child builds the writing skills needed to express themselves effectively and creatively when writing independently.

Whole School Writing Phased Approach:

1. Creating interest
2. Reading phase (Responding & Analysing)
3. Gathering content, planning stage
4. Planning and Writing (Drafting and editing)
5. Publish final draft

Writing units contain many opportunities for children to explore writing as both readers and writers, with much emphasis on children engaging with and analysing high-quality model texts on their journey to the final written piece. To foster children’s creativity within their writing and with an understanding that children must play an active role within their learning, teachers plan short writes, which allow children to experiment with different writing styles and techniques before planning and drafting their final piece of independent writing.

Drafting, editing and proofreading skills are modelled by all teachers and teaching assistants in English lessons. All classrooms are equipped with resources to enable children to be independent writers, including vocabulary mats, dictionaries and thesauruses. English Working Walls are current, interactive and reactive to the children’s needs as well as giving writing a clear purpose and showing that it is valued across the school. 

The importance of reading and writing skills are embedded across our whole school irresistible curriculum and teachers plan written tasks with the expectation that the standard of English mirrors that of work produced in English lessons. 

Year 2 and Key Stage Two classes are taught weekly spelling sessions using the progressive spelling scheme Spelling Shed. This approach builds directly on from the phonics teaching children receive throughout their time in EYFS and Key Stage One through the Bug Club Phonics scheme. Spelling Shed follows the National Curriculum and provides progression within and across year groups. Teachers use live marking within English lessons to identify age-appropriate spelling errors and children are then encouraged to correct these spellings independently.