Writing

Intent

At Bader it is our intent to aid all children to develop a love of the written word through excellent instruction and an immersive environment. We view language acquisition skills to be of the highest importance.

We strive to ensure children value their writing skillset and come to view its development as an essential lifelong learning journey.

As English (Writing) is a core subject within the National Curriculum, we place a high emphasis on its teaching and use it as an aspirational vehicle for our children to aim high in order to tackle social inequality. Through this, we deliberately scaffold opportunities for children to show and grow their social, emotional and intellectual development in line with our school’s values.

Taking into consideration appropriate evidence, our writing pedagogical models are split into three distinct systems (EYFS, KS1 & KS2), which themselves provide children with opportunities to build upon their growing knowledge, whilst giving them the opportunity to show excellence in their compositions.

Our writing curriculum is sequenced effectively to ensure distinct foundational knowledge is taught first, followed by key disciplinary knowledge. As children progress at Bader, our curriculum ensures that this key knowledge is revisited and consolidated so children develop effective and fluent mental models. As a result of this forward planning, it is our intent that children at Bader make accelerated progress based upon their unique starting points.

With this in mind, our foundation subject offer has been carefully tailored to provide opportunities to apply and consolidate children’s learning in writing in other areas.

At Bader our integrated and carefully selected curriculum in phonics, spelling and grammar and reading ensures all children are learning in a knowledge rich environment where their mental models are developed.

Implementation

The writing curriculum at Bader ensures children are taught to write effectively for a range of different purposes based upon different stimuli. Children are given direct instruction on how to adapt their writing to ensure key genre specific features are included.

Across phonics, spelling & grammar, reading and writing, staff at Bader ensure that children’s vocabulary and thus their mental models relating to word choice and usage are developed sequentially – that all children at Bader are happy and confident when making crucial vocabulary choices.

The writing curriculum at Bader is divided into three core pedagogical systems which fundamentally build both children’s foundational and disciplinary knowledge alongside our school’s core values of aiming high, excellence and determination:

• Early Years Foundation Stage – including Nursery & Reception
• Key Stage One – including Years One & Two
• Key Stage Two – including Years Three, Four, Five & Six

At the close of this page are three visual representations of the pedagogical systems utilised at Bader Primary School. Each system builds upon the one prior to it and is designed to focus on specific concepts of writing, including oral composition, planning, drafting, editing and proof reading.

Our writing curriculum includes a specific emphasis on handwriting, with direct instruction to enable children to develop a fluent, cursive and legible style of handwriting, promoting an understanding of how to present work appropriately in-line with our school handwriting scheme.

Integration of spelling is a further feature of our writing curriculum. Beginning with our youngest children, who develop these core early spelling skills through phonics instruction, to our older children who continue gaining knowledge and strategies to become fluent and accurate spellers.

Staff at Bader ensure children’s progression and success through our writing curriculum with bespoke ‘next step’ feedback for each child, which is adapted for each pedagogical system (and thus the age of the child in question) – facilitating children to make accelerated progress based upon their starting points.  Furthermore, staff utilise formative assessment via questioning and employing a ‘gap analysis’ model to writing assessment to deliver data-driven instruction and adaptive teaching.

Impact

The impact of our writing curriculum can be seen through happy children who aim high in their writing lessons and show determination when challenged with new writing genres.

When questioned, pupil voice around writing shows that children are increasingly happier and more confident with what they are asked to write about and are complementary about our pedagogical systems ‘hooks’ in addition to how they feel supported during the writing process.

How accessible and child-friendly our writing curriculum is – promoting inclusion for children with additional needs and disabilities.

Our writing curriculum allows children to develop their metacognitive skills, by encouraging them to reflect on their own writing processes, and to use strategies for planning, drafting, revising, and editing their work which adds to their understanding and the overall quality of writing across the school.

Furthermore, at Bader the statistical impact of our writing curriculum can be seen through our attainment in writing at the end of Key Stage 2:

Writing Systems