Writing
(You can read the full Writing Policy here)
Vision
At Long Ridings, our vision is to enable, develop and nurture a love of writing, through high quality teaching, immersing them in a book rich and innovative curriculum and give them ample opportunities to express themselves. We believe this encouragement will enable them to become confident, capable and enthusiastic writers, who will develop a genuine love of writing.
Intent
Our aim is that all children who attend our school leave us able to write clearly and confidently for a range of purposes and audiences. Writing skills are vital because this is how we express our thoughts, feelings and views. It is an important tool for developing our imaginations and understanding and for making sure our opinions are heard. At Long Ridings we achieve this through exposing children to good models of writing through a range of high-quality books, where they can investigate how the writer has manipulated language, grammar, and structure to engage, inform and persuade. Working alongside the “The Literacy Tree” we have designed a writing curriculum that ensures there are thematic links are made through the themes and conventions within significant literature; dramatic conventions that provide resonance and create a hook with a book; prediction and inference skills are explicitly embedded; grammar skills for writing are taught in context and applied purposefully; our pupils are given distinct shorter and longer writing opportunities; literary language is explicitly taught and applied in our writing; and the spelling skills are explored and linked to vocabulary acquisition.
Implementation
Our curriculum design ensures a fun and systematic approach to the teaching of Writing and incorporates: The use of high-quality books, which provide models of writing in a range of genres. Children are encouraged to analyse language and grammar used by the author of these books. Our pupils will be developing ideas, through drafting and editing to publishing; Regular opportunities for modelled, shared and guided writing. They will also have a range of engaging writing opportunities through which children can experiment with the language structure, vocabulary and punctuation they have been exploring. Finally, they are given the opportunities to share their writing with others and reflect on the impact of what they have written on their reader.
Impact
Assessment in writing is ongoing as teachers carry out in-depth assessment of children’s writing each term. Our assessment system is used to analyse gaps in children’s knowledge and gain an overview of specific groups of children across school. Every term we hold moderations across the school to ensure consistency in year groups, identify any areas of weakness and to inform our target children.
Progress across classes is closely monitored by the subject leader and senior leadership team. Monitoring will include: regular book looks, lesson observations, gathering evidence of good practice, pupil voice interviews, looking at data and regular learning walks. The findings of this monitoring will be used to inform next steps for the children and the implementation of writing across the school as a whole.
Our Writing Curriculum
At Long Ridings we use high. quality texts from the Literacy Tree to use as a basis for our writing.
