Writing
At Christ Church Academy, we recognise writing as a fundamental subject that underpins learning across the curriculum and plays a vital role in children’s everyday lives.
Our teaching of writing is designed to:
Cultivate independent, effective writers who can communicate for a variety of audiences and purposes with clarity, creativity and confidence.Build a rich and precise vocabulary.
Ensure mastery of transcription skills, including handwriting, spelling, grammar and punctuation, to support clear and coherent writing.
Inspire a lifelong love of English through lessons that connect reading and writing to high-quality texts and meaningful contexts.
Intent:
Writing skills underpin children’s learning in most curriculum areas and they rely upon them constantly in their everyday lives. The intent behind the teaching and learning of writing at Christ Church Academy is for all children to develop:
To become confident, independent writers who can write effectively for a wide range of purposesA vivid imagination which makes readers engage with and enjoy their writing
A highly developed vocabulary
Excellent transcription, Grammar, cohesion and handwriting skills
A love of writing and an appreciation of its educational, cultural and entertainment values
Implementation:
In Key Stage 1 writing occurs within their RWI lessons. In EYFS this occurs daily and in Year 1 and 2 this is four times a week. In these RWI writing lessons (which use a book as a stimulus that corresponds to their reading ability) pupils:
Learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 soundsLearn to write by saying the sounds and graphemes (Fred fingers)
Learn to write simple and then complex sentences
Compose stories based on picture strips
Compose a range of texts using discussion prompts
In Key Stage 2 pupils have writing lessons four times a week. In these writing lessons, children are taught basic English grammar and punctuation to help improve their writing, as well as the skills needed to help meet the success criteria for writing genres (both formal and informal). In Year 4 – 6 pupils have a draft book where they edit, up-level and re-edit their work until they write up in neat at the end of the week. Children use the editing and drafting process effectively to make sure their spelling, punctuation and grammar is consistently accurate.
Writing tasks are mostly based around a class text. The texts are age appropriate and challenge the children’s understanding and are based around the units of study in other subjects that term (such as in history, geography or science). This increases the children’s understanding of that unit of study and can lead to further thinking on the issue. The text does not just create stimulus for the writing task but has many other benefits: language enrichment - shared and modelled; enhances a love of books and reading; and supports children’s understanding of texts through teacher led questions. There will also be non-fiction writing linked to the class’s unit of study in geography, history or Science.