St Peter'sWriting
Subject Leader: Mr S Madher
Our Intent
The writing curriculum at St Peter's Junior School aims to foster a love for writing in our students while equipping them with the skills they need to express themselves confidently and effectively. We follow the Talk for Writing approach, which provides a systematic and engaging way of teaching writing across all genres.
Following initial assessments and in response to the children's needs, pupils will begin the academic year with a focus on core punctuation and grammar foundational knowledge through a four-week introductory unit. This ensures children begin the year with the fundamental knowledge and skills to create sentences correctly in addition to core transcription skills such as letter formation, phonics and spellings. Purposefully, this occurs before progressing onto any genre-specific Talk for Writing units. We strongly believe in ensuring pupils at St Peter's Junior School - particularly those joining from a range of feeder infant schools - master word class and sentence construction in order to be best prepared for any text type which will allow them to meet and exceed Key Stage 2 age-related expectations in writing.
Our curriculum focuses on developing students' understanding of the writing process, including planning, drafting, editing, and publishing. We also place emphasis on developing their vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure to enable them to communicate their ideas with clarity and precision.
Our students develop their writing skills, exploring different genres such as narrative, persuasive, and informative writing. We also focus on developing their ability to write for different purposes and audiences.
Throughout the curriculum, we encourage students to engage in the writing process through a range of activities, including planning, drafting, peer editing, and publishing. We also provide opportunities for them to share their writing with others, including through class presentations and publishing their work in our school newsletter.
Ultimately, our goal is to instil in our students a love for writing and equip them with the skills they need to communicate effectively in a range of contexts. We believe that the Talk for Writing approach provides a strong foundation for achieving this, and we are committed to providing a curriculum that is engaging, challenging, and supportive of all our students' learning needs.
Careers in Writing
If you really enjoy English (whether that reading or writing), here are some of the jobs you could aspire to do in the future:
- Journalist
- Author
- TV Presenter
- Police
- Social Media Manager
- App Developer
Talk for Writing
At St Peter’s we use the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach to writing developed by educational writer, Pie Corbett. It is fun, creative yet also rigorous and has a proven record of accelerating children’s learning.
It starts with enjoying and sharing stories. Throughout the school, we place a strong emphasis on children reading stories and enjoying a range of literature. Through regular reading, we want children to build up an extensive and rich vocabulary for use in their own writing.
Talk for Writing is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version. It is built on three stages of teaching:
1) Imitation – the children learn a text and the language they need
2) Innovation – the children adapt the model text with ideas of their own
3) Independent Application – the children create their own text using the language and skills that the model taught them.
During the initial ‘imitation‘ stage of Talk for Writing, a text (fiction and non-fiction) is introduced and orally told to the children. Together they learn to tell the story off by heart. To help them remember the text a multi-sensory approach is used. They retell a text with expression and actions and use a visual story map to support their retelling. As children learn the text word for word, they build up a bank of interesting vocabulary, phrases and types of plot which they can then use in their own writing. The principle is that if a child can tell a story, they will be able to write a story.
Once the story is learnt, children are encouraged to adapt it. At this ‘innovation‘ stage, children make the story their own. They could start with a simple change of character or for older children it may involve telling the story from a different view point or even the next part. They will make changes to their story map and rehearse retelling their innovated story orally. They will then write out the innovated story in manageable sections and will receive feedback from the teacher. There is an opportunity to respond to this marking before they go on to write the next section. This very supportive and structured approach allows children to gain confidence and know what they need to do in order to get better.
The final stage is the ‘independent application‘ stage where the children use all the skills they have learnt to write an independent piece. There is the freedom to draw upon their own ideas and experiences, or they can ‘hug closely’ to the shared text should they need to.
Grammar
Grammar is taught in context throughout all T4W units using the T4W grammar progression document. Teachers use the correct technical vocabulary in their teaching to encourage the correct use of these terms by children. Across the school, the ‘Always Toolkit’ is used as a continuous reminder of the basic building blocks of writing (including the correct use of capital letters, punctuation, joined-up handwriting and ensuring pupils re-read their work to check that it makes sense).
Handwriting
It is vital that children can write quickly, comfortably and legibly, as it is a skill needed in many curriculum areas. Children’s self-esteem is heightened when they are able to take pride in their handwriting and consistently beautifully-presented writing is celebrated with a pen licence. All staff use cursive scr1pt as appropriate when modelling, marking or writing comments on children’s work. Shared and guided writing activities enable staff to model letter formation and handwriting and provide children with opportunities to practice skills. Handwriting is also taught in separate sessions on a regular basis to ensure it is given sufficient emphasis.
Spellings
Spelling is an integral part of the writing process. Pupils who spell with ease are able to concentrate on the content of their writing and the making of meaning. While it is important to remember that spelling is not the most important aspect of writing, confidence in spelling often has a profound effect on the writer’s self-image. Accurate spelling implies consideration for the reader and also recognises the deeply embedded notions about correctness which we hold as a society about spelling.
Teachers will use Spelling Shed planning to deliver an explicit spelling lesson at least once a week to their whole class and an assignment (online game) will be sent home for children to complete as part of their weekly homework, as outlined in the Homework Policy.
Phonics
On entering Year 3, all children are screened and individuals identified as requiring additional support with reading or spellings are provided with daily phonics intervention to help bring them closer to age-related expectations.
Assessment & Feedback
A range of assessment techniques and tools are used by the teachers to generate information. Assessment of writing takes place during each writing session. The assessments formed allow class teachers to provide ongoing next steps for the pupils so they can identify how to become a better writer. To support staff with their assessments in writing, we have progression grids which allow them to identify that age at which a child is working. The assessment of writing enables a clear progression to be seen from Year 3 to Year 6 and is broken down further for each year group into working towards, at the expected standard and working at a greater depth (at a higher standard). Each term, we formally assess pupils’ hot writing tasks. This enables us to identify clear targets for our pupils and allows teachers to adapt teaching sequences as needed.
