Writing – Intent

Our Vision

“Hope: building for a brighter future”

It is vital for children to be able to formulate, organise, articulate and communicate their thoughts, ideas and emotions, so that they can be read and understood by a reader and our children can succeed throughout their education and into adulthood. This incorporates knowledge and skills of composition and transcription.

Writing empowers children to make positive change—through persuasive, creative and powerful writing, our world is limitless.

Curriculum Aims

At North Star, we aim to:

• Equip all our children with the fundamental skills of writing that are needed to be successful throughout their lives, including:
  • Formulation and organising ideas
  • Understanding the rules and conventions of a variety of text types, along with their audience and purpose
  • Developing spelling, grammar and handwriting skills
  • Valuing language and its use to articulate and communicate ideas effectively and creatively
  • Drafting, editing and improving their work
• Provide children with a well-sequenced curriculum that builds knowledge and these skills over time, giving the best opportunity to develop and succeed.
• Inspire writing through an ambitious and diverse range of texts and authors, both in writing lessons and across the wider curriculum.
• Develop children’s empathy and understanding of the world through the texts and genres explored, giving children an opportunity to express and develop their understanding.
• Prioritise quality first teaching for all, adapting curriculum content and lessons plans as necessary to ensure progress and fulfilment for all children.
• Promote a love of writing.

Values

Christian: compassion, kindness & respect                    Learning: curiosity, ambition, resilience & perseverance

Through writing lessons at North Star, children will develop their compassion and empathy when asked to write about different issues, cultures and experiences and from different points of view. In turn, this will enable them to become kind and respectful members of society.

Ambitious and varied model texts will help to provide a window to the wider world, inspiring children’s curiosity, and promoting ambition for their own learning and writing. Development of drafting and editing skills in particular will build children’s resilience and perseverance to work towards their very best.

Writing – Implementation

At North Star, we follow the curriculum structure of CUSP (Curriculum with Unity Schools Partnership), which draws on academic research and incorporates Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction (see Curriculum Policy).

Long-term planning

A variety of genres of writing are covered across children’s time at North Star and within each academic year, a genre is explored twice. This spaced retrieval of new knowledge and skills helps to embed learning into children’s long-term memories.

Before children start composing their own ideas, they must first gain the knowledge of how to effectively and correctly use certain grammatical and organisational features, spelling patters and rules, and audience-engaging devices. Time is given to the learning of this knowledge before the application in an extended piece, and new content is carefully and logically sequenced so that learning is built in small steps and on solid foundations.

Phases of a lesson

• ‘Connect’ – making connections with prior learning so children can build their learning on solid foundations (daily review)
• ‘Explain’ – new material (including high-quality vocabulary) is introduced in small steps to support the effectiveness of the working memory and avoid cognitive overload (small steps)
• ‘Example’ – teaching staff clearly model the application of the learning so children know what to do and how to apply their knowledge (modelling)
• ‘Attempt’ – teaching staff guide pupils through a further example, using purposeful questioning (questioning) and effective examples to address misconceptions (checking for understanding)
• ‘Apply’ – purposeful, independent practice reduces the load on the working memory (independent practice) while still achieving a high success rate
• ‘Challenge’ – all children are given the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and understanding of new content by applying it in a different way

Spiritual development

Through writing at North Star, we encourage children to understand the rules and conventions of writing and then use them effectively and creatively. We teach children to appreciate and use the beauty of language and shine creatively as they untangle their thoughts, express their emotions and reflect on experiences.

Inclusion/support for all

High-quality modelling enables all children to see the small steps and elements required to write well. We use a range of scaffolding strategies to support children who are working towards or below age related expectations, including adapting model texts, providing sentence starters, word mats, using writing frames, dictaphones and computer software (eg Word dictation). Teachers provide and gradually remove these scaffolds as the children require. Teachers can also use flexible grouping to provide further support within lessons.

Writing – Impact

Pupils

At the end of a writing unit, children will complete a self-assessment task against the ‘Ingredients for Success’ - the specifically taught writing objectives covered in the unit. CUSP resources provide examples of each ‘ingredient’ to assist pupils with identifying their personal successes and areas for development.

Teachers

Teachers also assess pupils’ written work against each unit’s ingredients for success. Areas for development are built into planning for future units covering the same content, both within and across academic years. Pupils’ progress is also measured against key performance indicators for writing.

Children in Years 2 to 6 will sit termly assessments for grammar, punctuation and spelling, using either past KS1 or KS2 SATs papers or PiXL diagnostic papers. Data from these assessments is used formatively to check for progress and gaps in children’s attainment which means that teachers can plan future learning accordingly.

Teachers use written work and assessments together to make a termly summative assessment for individual children to assess whether they are on track to meet or have met the age-related expected outcomes. Data is recorded in our in-school tracking system and is used at Pupil Progress Meetings so that we can track the progress of all pupils, identifying areas where more progress needs to be made.

Subject leader

North Star’s subject leader(s) has first responsibility for monitoring the quality of teaching and learning, and for making and enacting plans to improve the same. They do this in various ways, typically with a specific focus for the monitoring activity:

• Learning walks/lesson drop ins – short observations of lessons
• Book looks – reviewing a sample of books/work from across the school
• Collecting pupil voice – speaking to a cross-section of children about their learning
• Professional discussions with staff – formally and informally, through reporting and check-in chats

The subject leader also reports to governors.

Governors

Federation governors play an important role in receiving reports from subject and school leaders, visiting school to observe the experiences of our children and holding school leaders to account on their school improvement planning and the quality of education in our Federation.

Statutory assessment

Pupils in year 6 will sit the national end of key stage assessments (SATs) for grammar, punctuation and spelling in May each year. The outcome of these assessments are reported to parents with the pupils’ annual reports at the end of the summer term.