Writing

Writing at East Stour school

When your child first joins school, their early writing experiences will be focused on developing their gross and fine motor skills, mark making and learning how to hold a pencil correctly.  By Year 1, children will be keen to write about their own experiences or write their own versions of familiar stories.  Shared and guided writing lessons are crucial in helping children learn about what it means to be a writer and how to express ideas in simple sentences.  They will begin to learn about ‘describing words’ as well as the correct use of capital letters and full stops.  

From Year 2, children are introduced to the exciting world of Pathways To Write, a whole school mastery approach to writing.  Units of work (1 a term for Y2-Y6) use high quality, highly engaging picture based texts.  Skills are built up through repetition and each unit ends with an opportunity for children to demonstrate the skills they have been taught.  As they progress through the school, children will encounter many different writing styles, such as biography, persuasive writing, recounts, news reports and letters.  

Each unit has three stages:

The Gateway (1-2 lessons)

• Begin at the Gateway with a ‘hook’ session to intrigue and enthuse young writers
• Use objects, people, images or role-play to stimulate questions about the chosen text
• Give pupils the opportunity to predict the text
• Establish the purpose and audience of the writing
• Revisit previous mastery skills and ongoing skills

The Pathway (10 lessons)

• Introduce pupils to three new writing skills from their year group curriculum
• Provide opportunities to practise and apply the skill they have learnt through short and extended writing tasks including character descriptions, poetry, dialogue between characters, fact files or diary entries in role
• Provide opportunities to re-cap and apply previously taught skills
• Challenge greater depth writers through a wider range of tasks e.g. changes to form, viewpoint and audience

Writeaway (4 lessons)

• Section and sequence texts independently or collaboratively
• Create extended pieces of writing over time
• Opportunity to apply mastery skills
• Time for planning, writing, checking, editing, redrafting and publishing
• A fiction or non-fiction outcome will be written (covering a wide range of genres and themes over the year)

At East Stour, Pathways to Write is taught as a whole class lesson.  When needed, additional support is provided through targeted, small group work, provision of Language Through Colour words banks, Clicker 7 and adult scribing.    

In order to be successful writers, children need to be able to use a rich and varied vocabulary.  Pathways To Write has a strong focus on language – each unit introduces children to appropriate vocabulary to include in the final writing task.  As a school, we encourage children to love words.  Good vocabulary is displayed on the class working wall; we teach vocabulary in our early morning work and we include it in lesson starters.   

Spellings: Teachers use Spelling Shed to support their teaching from Year 2 and to provide activities that link to the weekly spellings. There is a clear progression in spelling which follows the requirements of the National Curriculum.