INTENT

At Nanpean School, we understand that writing is a vital part of the curriculum that gives children a voice to share their ideas with the world. We are driven by the knowledge of the need to develop a learner’s writing ability to enable them to play a full part in society and be successful in their later life. Writing forms a significant part of all subjects across the curriculum that enable pupils to communicate with others and write for a range of purposes.

It is our vision that every child will learn to become writers by being given inspiring materials and opportunities to support and challenge them. We believe this encouragement will enable them to become confident, capable, enthusiastic writers who will use writing to express themselves and understand that writing has a real purpose.

We are determined to support every child to learn the fundamental skills needed to write at Nanpean School and therefore aim to support our pupils to:

• Acquire a wide vocabulary
• Have an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing and spoken language
• Appreciate our rich and varied literacy heritage including those with links to the local community
• Write clearly, accurately and coherently
• Adapt language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

Handwriting

Good handwriting increases children's motivation. Writing involves many processes, so having fluent hanwriting is one less thing to think about. In Reception, we teach every child how to hold a pecnil comfortably and to form letters correctly using the mnemonics from our phonic lessons. This is Stage one of the handwriting programme. 

Once children can write letters, they are ready to join the Letter Village. At Stage two, children form letters that will flow into a joined style. In later stages we teach children how to join letters and then build fluency.

It is expected that all members of staff, class teachers and teaching assistants, model the school handwriting style at all times i.e. when writing on the board or in children’s books. By the end of key stage 2, all children should be displaying an efficient, quick, neat and legible handwriting style that is effective in recording their ideas.

Spelling

The Spelling Shed scheme follows the National Curriculum objectives and takes children through the statutory and non-statutory spelling lists in each age phase. At our school, each class has a stand-alone spelling lesson of 45 minutes a week. Each lesson contains a revision sections from earlier weeks and a 'Hive' to test pupils' retention. Following this, is the introduction of the new spelling focus and independent application activities. Spelling Shed has the following key areas embedded in its core:

Orthography: The pupils will continue to build on the firm foundations built from studying phonics in key stage one. They will continue to break down spelling into smallest units of sound, and cluster them into syllables in order to write words effectively. 

Morphology: Pupils will study words, word parts, their meaning and how this affects spelling. There are lessons throughout he scheme that consolidate children's knowledge of common morphemes such as root formations, prefixes and suffixes. 

Etymology: Most lessons include an etymology element that allows teachers to teach the cildren about the origin of words that they are learning about. Pupils will be able to see how the English language has, over time, borrowed and integrated words and spellings from a range of languages. 

Spellings are set as assignments weekly for the pupils on an online platform. 

Grammar and Punctuation

Grammar and punctuation has a sequenced approach to ensure that skills and knowledge are built on year by year to maximise learning for all children. Knowledge of grammar and punctuation is needed for pupils to write with control and accuracy. We understand that although these programmes of study need to be explicitly taught, integration and contextualisation within daily English lessons will make this learning more memorable. Each WAGOLL, within a unit of work, has a clear list of grammatical and punctuation features. Lessons directly teach the content that pupils do not know and revise what they have been taught before. These lessons are taught within the genre and topic of the unit. Punctuation and grammar cocepts are routinely revisited through out GPS starters at the beginning of every lesson.

Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar

We start the academic year by teaching 'Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar'. This is to give a structured, back to basics approach to teaching the foundational grammar and puntuation skills to our pupils. The resources use the concept of 'place value' to teach pupils how different grammatical elements and punctuation marks contribute to the meaning and structure of sentences, therefore improving clarity, accuracy and overall comprehension in writing. We teach the noun and verbs lessons every day until most children are secure. at this stage, the remainder of the programme is taught alongside the first writing unit. As a school, we made this decision to ensure that the sentence writing part of the programme is directly applied to the children's longer compositions and that long-term links are made to improve overall accuracy of writing outisde ofthe programme.

Composition

Teachers promote writing and look for ways to inspire and motivate pupils so that they see themselves as ‘writers’. Staff use the objectives from the New English National Curriculum to support their planning for English. 

Writing Units

Writing genres are mapped out on the whole-school overview. The writing overviews detail the agreed specific features of the genres across the school as well as the year group specfic grammar and punctuation content. English lesson are taught for one hour a day and are atught over a three-stage cycle.

Stage 1

All units start with a WAGOLL (What a good one looks like) which as been written to year group age-related expectations with progression in the genre from the previous year. These textx include the grammatical and punctuation features that need to be taught as well as National Curriculum statutory spellings. The children will investigate the key features of the text type and discuss the writer's use of language. At this stage, through teacher assessment, the tecaher will explicitly teach grammar and punctuation knowledge and/or revise things that need to be revisited. This is done within the context of the writing stimulus so that pupils can transfer this knowledge easily to the context for their writing. 

Stage 2

At this stage, daily writing takes place to demonstrate how to write the text by alterating the WAGOLL. The children will innovate on the WAGOLL by substituting or changing characters, settings, topics or viewpoints. Teachers use shared writing to model the writing process and to demonstrate grammatical features at word, sentence and text level.

Stage 3

Pupils have the opportunity to plan and write their own text based on the genre they have been learning about. This is done with discusssion with teachers and peers. At this stage, in KS2, editing skills are explicitly taught so that pupils know how to mae revisions to their own work. A final version is then written into the pupils' Independent Writing book.

Subject-specific texts that link to work being undertaken in other areas are also used English lessons to reinforce knowledge of the wider curriculum.

 Pupils have access to a wide range of writing opportunities that include:

• Shared writing
• Guided writing
• Independent writing
• Writing different text types and narrative styles
• Writing in different curriculum areas
• Handwriting practice
• Writing from a variety of stimuli
• Planning, drafting, editing and presenting
• Using ICT
  

IMPACT

Through our approach to writing our children are able to:

• Spell words, knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics), understanding the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words
• Articulate and communicate ideas coherently
• Write a range of genres with clarity, an awareness of the audience, purpose and context
• Use an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar
• Write with fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting