Our Writing Curriculum
Intent
As a school of both excellence and confidence we strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners. We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach; this links closely to the way we teach reading, as the text that we use in writing lessons. Where appropriate careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s English learning is relevant and meaningful: where possible linking our reading, writing and the topic that we are covering in History and Geography. By taking this approach we aim to deepen pupils' wider knowledge while embedding the skills needed to be a writer. We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.
As a School of Love and Opportunity, we believe that all learning should be adapted to the needs of all children (SEN, EAL, more able, disadvantaged) and that the curriculum should be carefully planned to take account of everyone in the class so that all can succeed.
Our intentions in writing are for children to:
- Write for a purpose
- See themselves as real writers
- Take ownership of their writing
- See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process
- Acquire the ability to organise and plan their written work
Implementation
The writing programme of Our Lady of Victories follows the National Curriculum to ensure both progression and coverage across KS1 and KS2.
At Our Lady of Victories writing and reading are closely linked. High quality texts are used to immerse pupils in rich vocabulary and effective writing structures. Pupils are supported to become enthusiastic writers who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and across a variety of contexts.
Teachers ensure that a variety of genres, including narrative, non-fiction and poetry, are taught throughout the year. As a School of Creativity we aim for all children to see themselves as authors and poets.
The Five Phase sequence provides consistency and progression matched to age related expectations. Pupils are given regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Writing tasks are specific and meaningful, and often meet a purpose to engage children and to illustrate how their writing skills can be applied to real life contexts. Teachers demonstrate high-quality, age related modelling of writing within a unit and provide pupils with examples to support their independent writing. Short burst writing opportunities are built into each unit to ensure that all pupils have the chance to revisit and embed prior learning. Teachers will encourage and develop the pupils' stamina for writing by providing writing opportunities across the curriculum. Pupils are encouraged to transfer their key topic knowledge and vocabulary into their writing and vice versa to transfer their spelling, grammar and punctuation knowledge into their topic work.
Grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are taught through English lessons as much as possible. Teachers plan to teach the required skills through the genres of writing that they are teaching, linking it to the genre to make it more connected with the intended writing outcome. Teachers can focus on particular grammar and punctuation skills as stand-alone lessons, if they feel that the class need additional lessons to embed and develop their understanding or to consolidate skills.
Pupil’s are encouraged to take ownership of their learning and teachers ensure that they are aware of their particular strengths and areas of development. The schools approach to marking works hand in hand with this as misconceptions and improvements are made within lessons as much as possible.
Impact
As a School of excellence our aim is that by the time pupils leave Our Lady of Victories all pupils will have made at least good progress from their starting points. Pupils will demonstrate a positive attitude towards writing and will have pride in the work they do. Pupils will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Due to the link between reading and writing pupils will have a good understanding of how different authors write and will use this to inspire their own writing. Ultimately pupils will be ready for the next stage in their learning.
A showcase of the writing taking place throughout the school
Some examples of the brilliant writing taking place across our school
