Brightlingsea Primary School & Nursery

English Writing

Intent

At Brightlingsea Primary School and Nursery, we understand that writing is an essential skill and that we must overcome any barriers that prevent children from becoming confident writers.

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.

We aim to ensure that 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 topic work.

We want to 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. 

Our intentions in writing are for children to:

• Write for a purpose and see themselves as real writers
• Learn from an exposure to a variety of texts in the genre they are writing in
• Take ownership of their writing
• See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process
• Acquire the ability to organise and plan their written work
• Acquire the ability to edit and improve the work of others and their own

Implementation

Writing will be taught through genre focussed units which follow a process whereby children deconstruct a wide variety of model texts, and are taught the skills required to complete an independent piece of writing in that genre.

This will include

• Using high quality model texts
• Exposing children to a wide range of high level vocabulary 
• Giving children opportunities to write for an authentic purpose 
• Ensuring children have the opportunities to talk about and plan their writing 
• Teaching an understanding of grammar and ability to use it for effect 
• Giving children opportunity to draft, plan, write, evaluate, revise and edit their own work as well as offer feedback on the work of their peers 
• Explicit teaching of spelling, including the statutory common exception, spelling rules and morphology. 
• Encouraging children to pride in their work and its presentation, including their handwriting (handwriting policy pending).

Impact

By the time children leave our school they will:

• Have made good progress from their starting point
• Most children will meet ARE and will be ready for the secondary curriculum at the end of KS2
• Have a love and confidence for writing and write for enjoyment across a range of genres, purposes and audiences 
• Be able to apply spelling and grammatical concepts in their work.
• Become confident and effective communicators with a rich vocabulary
• Be able to produce written work in all areas of the curriculum to a high standard

Learning environments

Content on the learning walls is current and reflects the learning journey undertaken throughout the unit (teaching should encourage children to be a part of building the working wall together and reminding children to use and access the learning from the working wall to support their writing).

• Each class displays examples of pupils’ high quality writing
• Modelled examples are to be displayed
• The classroom is a vocabulary-rich environment

Assessment

Target Tracker will be used termly to assess the progress that the children have made in their writing. SLT and the English leader will analyse the data and set subsequent targets for individual year groups/ track and monitor interventions. Staff will use the assessment tool to inform planning for individuals and the whole class, ensuring interventions are in place to address gaps.

Monitoring

We are aware of the need to monitor and review/ update the school’s writing policy on a regular basis so that we can take account of the improvements made in our practice, and changes to assessments, materials and government requirements. We will therefore review this policy at least once every year.

Formal review

• Writing throughout the school and how it reflects this policy, will also be reviewed throughout the year in the following ways:
• Governors’ work scrutiny
• SLT/ YGL planning, recorded learning, assessment scrutiny
• English Leader’s scrutiny
• Learning walks
• EYFS/KS1/KS2 external moderation
• EYFS/KS1/KS2 internal moderation
• Individual year groups moderation for consistency and ability progression
• Monitoring across year groups for progression
• Moderation with other schools