Writing

The teaching of writing at Crowle Primary Academy focuses on developing pupils’ competence in both transcription and composition. We believe that writing is essential to thinking and learning and strive to promote enjoyment of this complex skill. Pupils are taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing as well as articulating and communicating their ideas fluently and coherently for the reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Writing also depends on fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting. Pupils are taught to:

• Develop the stamina and skills to write a length

• Spell and punctuate sentences with increasing accuracy

• Use an increasingly wide range of grammar correctly

• Write down ideas fluently using clear, neat handwriting

• Use an increasingly wide range of vocabulary

• Show awareness of audience and purpose

• Expand the range of their writing

Specific practices include:

• Planning meaningful and purposeful opportunities for writing based on the novel study approach and, where possible, real-life purposes to engage and inspire pupils

• Planning for writing which require pupils to write in a wide variety of forms

• Providing pupils with opportunities to self-assess, peer-assess and evaluate their thinking and writing with their

  teachers

• Teaching pupils to plan, proof-read, redraft and present their work appropriately

• Planned opportunities to introduce, explain, explore and use new vocabulary found in reading and writing

• Explicitly teaching handwriting skills (up to year 4)

• Daily phonics sessions, primarily based on the Letters and Sounds document, for pupils in Foundation Stage and Key

  Stage One and for target pupils in Key Stage Two

• Explicitly teaching spelling rules and patterns in accordance with the requirements of the National Curriculum for

  England 2014 (Y1-6)

• Weekly grammar sessions based on Rainbow Grammar – see Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar section

The academy is beginning to introduce Rainbow Writing as a tool for helping children understand how to structure and improve their writing. 

This is a strategy which applies Rainbow Grammar sentence patterns to short pieces of writing using a structured approach, which supports the application of their grammatical understanding. If you would like further information about Rainbow Writing please contact the academy.