At West Haddon Primary School children are provided with opportunities to write in many different contexts, for different purposes and audiences, across our school curriculum. Children are taught to form their letters correctly, leading to a fluent and legible style, and become increasingly aware of the conventions of writing, including grammar, punctuation and spelling.

The children will:

• experience a wide range of writing activities to include both chronological and non chronological writing
• relate writing to their own experiences and environment
• discuss their writing frequently, talking about the various types and purposes of writing
• be aware of the need to write legibly and to use layout and space effectively to aid the reader
• experience grammatical vocabulary such as: sentence, verb etc. in line with the National Curriculum, through specifically designed activities
• read examples of good writing in various forms and recognise the criteria for such writing
• have experience of and become accustomed to drafting and redrafting their work
• write in response to a wide range of stimuli
• become increasingly aware of the role of dictionaries and thesauruses
• become increasingly aware of spelling rules

In Nursery we provide the children with lots of opportunities to develop their early writing skills using a variety of methods such as mark making in the sand, paint as well as using different equipment from chalks, paint brushes to pens and pencils. Every day the children participate in a programme called ‘Squiggle while you Wiggle’ to develop their core strength, gross and fine motor control.

In Reception children continue to build upon their early writing skills through opportunities to mark make building up to writing recognisable letters through to writing simple sentences.

Our writing process KS1 to KS2

West Haddon Primary School follows an 8-step writing sequence. These steps are followed over either a two week or three-week period of time. At the end on this unit of work, children will be expected to analyse their own work against the APP objectives. This is then peer assessed and finally assessed by the class teacher. Children will be given two targets to work towards on their next APP piece of writing when this is complete. These 8 stages are seen below:

Immerse: In this stage, children will learn about the theme they will be exploring for the unit e.g. newspaper reports. They will read examples of this, explore examples within books, notice features and details about the text and try examples within their own writing.

Planning: At this stage, children will begin to map out their ideas, collect vocabulary based around their text, use a framework to plan and create a checklist of key features to include.

Draft: Next is the drafting stage where the children will have their first go at writing their own examples. They will start this by reminding themselves of good examples, including any of their writing and ideas from the immersion step and learn from teacher modelling.

Share: Children will then look at the work of others within the class. They may share their ideas by reading out/performing extracts, notice what is working well in their writing and learn from other’s work.

Evaluate: The children evaluate their work. They will think about what they have learnt from other’s writing, both teachers and children. They will ask questions to improve their understanding and consider the flow of their writing. They will also suggest tips to guide their peers through the process.

Revise: The children will make improvements to flow, characterisation and description of their work. They make changes and reflect on what works well and what needs to be improved.

Editing: In this stage, the children focus on their punctuation, grammar and use resources such as dictionaries and thesauruses to improve their work.  They will also look at their targets from their previous piece of writing and check to see if they have met these in their current writing.

Publishing: This stage gives the children the opportunity to ‘publish’ their work by writing it up in neat. This will include all of their revisions and edits. The children take pride in all they have achieved in the 2-3 week cycle.

Handwriting

We teach cursive handwriting, where letters join together.  Practicing letter formation at home benefits children. The resource website www.letterjoin.co.uk and www.communication4all.co.uk have useful presentations and resources that show how to form the letters correctly.