Writing at Sandfield Close Primary School

We value writing greatly at Sandfield Close Primary School and ensure that children write on a daily basis. To be able to write, children need to be able to speak in sentences, be able to think imaginatively and be able to have the mechanics of writing to record what they want to share.

Children in Year 6 role studied Harry Potter. They wrote a letter about it.

We ensure that children are stimulated and engaged to write through immersing our children in rich discussions and experiences around a text, visual or auditory stimulus. Our children are encouraged to write for a purpose, giving them a reason to understand the audience they will write for and the viewpoint they are writing from and the form their writing will take.  We would like all our children to be ready for life ahead of them in the local community and beyond which is why we place such an importance on the ability to write for different purposes.

Aims

At Sandfield Close Primary School we aim to:

• ensure children can speak using complete sentences, developing their vocabulary, so that they can write meaningful sentences;
• develop children’s ability to write for different purposes, for different audiences, from different viewpoints within various forms of writing;
• equip children with the correct grammatical requirements as stipulated in the national curriculum which are applied effectively to enhance children’s writing;
• build confidence in the process of writing so that children feel confident to plan, orally rehearse, write, read aloud, draft, edit, refine and amend their writing;
• support children to be self-reflective against the curriculum requirements per year group so that children know what features or techniques they need to apply to their writing to make it age appropriate;
• encourage children to write imaginatively, drawing on what they have read to support them to develop their style;
• develop their personal voice through our continual focus on reading;
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• Effective composition involves articulating and communicating ideas, and then organising them coherently for a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.
• ensure learning is fun!

Celebrating success & sharing weekly teacher assessments with parents

All staff will share a ‘star writer of the week’ on display for parents to see. These are then transferred into a display book to celebrate handwriting achievements.

Please have a look at the examples of age appropriate writing produced by children from Reception through to Year 6 in the video below.

Please also take a look at the target posters from Target Tracker that contain the National Curriculum requirements for writing for each year group that will help parents support writing at home.

Please have a look at the progression of National Curriculum requirements for writing which can be seen through the school.

Please also find exemplification documents for age expected standards for Year 2 and Year 6 and greater depth standards for Year 2 and Year 6 that will support parents with understanding what the expected and greater depth standards of writing look like. These are exemplification materials produced by the Standards and Testing Agency that are available on the internet.

Please also find literacy overviews from across the school which can help parents to support their child/children with discussing the text/stimulus in focus.