Writing and Grammar
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LAT Narrative Over Time
Introduction
At The Learning Academies Trust, we are highly motivated to ensure that the disadvantages children face in their life circumstances do not affect their education, dreams and futures. We place a high value on children’s literacy skills as we are thoroughly aware how these enable children to access much of the curriculum and the world around us. Empowering our children with the life-skill of being able to express their thoughts and viewpoints through the written word will develop their confidence and creativity and arm them to contribute fully to society.
Intent | What and why do we teach what we teach?
Our Writing curriculum at The Learning Academies Trust has been created with the aim to develop inspired writers who can apply their knowledge of English to communicate in an ever-changing world. We provide new experiences through exposure to a wide range of texts across a breadth of fiction, non-fiction and poetry genres allowing them to become imaginative and creative writers whilst ensuring they are exposed to a varied, rich vocabulary. The curriculum has been designed carefully, in a spiral fashion, to build on prior learning and embed key skills progressively so they can effectively present their ideas and learning, applying their speaking, reading and writing skills across the curriculum.
As with most of our curriculum, the foundations to writing in the EYFS and KS1 are focused around phonics and oracy in a context which is relevant and known to them; usually exploring their own lives and those close to them. Oracy, through all areas, enables children to communicate effectively with greater sophistication and as pupils communicate their ideas in writing with increasing ease, fluency and enjoyment, their purpose and audience for writing becomes wider-reaching and they develop their own voice and style. Drawing on inspiring, high-quality and diverse texts to explore language, children’s vocabulary repertoire broadens and they are able to articulate and express themselves in a way that allows the reader to appreciate and clearly understand their viewpoints as well as making meaningful connections between reading and writing.
At The Learning Academies Trust, our writing curriculum, at a minimum, follows the objectives of the National Curriculum. The aims of teaching writing, as outlined in the National Curriculum, are to ensure that all pupils:
- acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
Implementation | How and when do we teach what we teach?
Throughout our EYFS, pupils are provided with a wealth of resources to develop their writing skills. Emergent writers can use various writing resources to practise making meaningful marks during independent learning times and use this to extend their play whilst developing their fine and gross motor skills ready for writing. Emergent writing is enhanced through the delivery of systematic, synthetic phonics sessions in which pupils learn individual letter formation and simple sentence construction. Once the children have mastered writing in its most simplistic form in contexts that are meaningful and known to them, the purpose and audience for writing grows. To support the progression in writing from the EYFS, The Learning Academies Trust has developed a set of agreed principles for the teaching of writing which enables schools to keep their autonomy, but give enough guidance so that we can talk a common language and share best practice. The principles are based around the I do, We do, You do approach and Gradual Release Theory outlining how writing should be taught in order to be progressive and logical culminating in the independent creation of a text. Across a writing unit, there are 3 clear stages: Immersion, Innovation – Shared Writing and Innovation – Independent Writing. The principles detail how each stage incorporates oral rehearsal, live-modelling of sentence and paragraph construction and progresses through to the planning, drafting, editing and publishing stages.
Across a term, teachers will plan to deliver a minimum of one fiction unit, one non-fiction unit and one poetry unit. Schools complement the required units with additional units that are often based around high-quality, inspiring books (from the school’s Reading Spine) which are used to address any gaps or misconceptions in learning. Following our genre matrix, pupils are provided with WAGOLLS (What A Good One Looks Like) so that they are exposed to high quality models and can begin to understand what the outcome of a unit of learning will look like. We explicitly teach grammar, supported by the National Curriculum appendices to ensure progression, as part of the writing process. This leads into shared writing, whereby pupils are shown how to apply what they have learnt through creating their own piece of writing. This provides opportunities for children to develop their author’s voice and breadth of vocabulary which has been influenced by what they have read. The final outcomes are used to celebrate successes and identify next steps in learning.
Spelling and handwriting are taught a school level, ensuring that at a minimum, the required objectives from the National Curriculum are covered.
Impact | How do we assess the impact of what we teach via pupil outcomes?
The impact of our writing curriculum is that children have a positive attitude towards writing and enjoy it. They become confident and successful learners’ who can achieve regardless of their starting points. Pupils will be able to write with more skill and so will know more, understand more and therefore do more writing. Teachers will use a range of formative and summative assessment in writing to assess the children’s understanding and ascertain what they need to do next; often this happens through the use of Whole-Class Feedback.
Alongside the daily review of learning, pupils will be assessed more formally on their independent writing outcomes to the three, agreed units per term as a minimum. The writing is assessed using writing criteria which has been developed and agreed by English Leads across the Trust using the National Curriculum, its appendices and STA writing frameworks as a basis. Across the year, writing is moderated within schools and also across the Trust in termly moderation sessions. Every school completes NFER and SATs SPAG papers three times a year as well and the data is analysed by leaders to enable teachers to set targets and address misconceptions.