The Canons CE Primary Overview Writing Curriculum

Big questions:

What do we teach? How do we teach it? When do we teach it? Why do we teach it like that? How do we know it is working? How do teachers know what to teach? Why?

Writing is a complex task. It requires the coordination of fine motor skills and cognitive skills, reflects the social and cultural patterns of the writer’s time and is also linguistically complex.

(Myhill and Fisher, 2010; Fisher, 2012).

“Exemplary practice was observed where … reading and writing around good quality texts, including the teaching of grammar, spelling and handwriting, were interwoven, taught purposefully and assessed within a balanced, well-organised and exciting curriculum.”

Warwickshire moderation 2017

Effective teaching: approaches that have been found effective in the teaching of writing include teaching pupils the writing process; teaching them to write for a variety of purposes; setting specific goals to pupils and fostering inquiry skills; teaching pupils to become fluent with handwriting, spelling and sentence construction, typing and word processing; providing daily time to write; creating an engaged community of writers. 

Implementation

Rosenshine principles apply to English lessons: 

1) Review of previous learning 

2) Small steps 

3) Engaging all children/questioning 

4) Modelling 

5) Guided practice 

6) Check understanding 

7) High success rate for understanding 

8) Scaffolding 

9) Independent practice 

10) Regular reviewing 

How do teachers know what to teach? 

• The writing curriculum is split into small steps in the learning ladders. Teachers use this to plan for English lessons and monitor progress. 

• Regular training sessions happen with the English lead to ensure there is a consistent approach and to give updates on recent research etc.  

• For spellings RWInc spelling scheme  

• Handwriting: www.teachhandwriting.co.uk website used for lower school 

• Vocabulary: Word Aware / Talk through stories 

• Oracy: Specific skills are taught based on 4 key areas: Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive and Social & Emotional. (Voice 21) 

We recogise that knowledge is ’sticky’ and children need revisit text types, grammatical form, language, audience and purpose of pieces of writing and many more areas so that they can build up a schema for each piece of writing and, therefore, become an accomplished writer.  

How do we track progress? 

• Formative assessment for learning strategies are used on a daily basis in English lessons. These will allow a picture to be built up of the pupils’ progress and any areas of strength or weakness which can then be addressed in teachers’ planning.  

• Summative assessment of learning is completed termly.  

• Children complete independent writing pieces within a unit of work, which are assessed against our writing criteria.  

• Analysis of the data impacts upon teachers’ planning so pupils’ needs can be addressed. Moderation of teacher assessment is also completed termly in order to ensure that judgements are accurate.  

• Children are formally checked using Learning Ladders to ensure that they are making at least expected progress if not more than expected progress, this document is then monitored by subject leaders and SLT.  

• Children who are not on track are identified for intervention/target teaching. 

At the end of KS1 and KS2 teachers use the Teacher Assessment Framework to report Teacher Assessment 

Impact

How do we close the gap/track progress? 

• Targeted interventions at the point of teaching and additional support where necessary. 

• Learning Ladders Assessment to inform progress and gaps in learning. 

• Use of moderation and standardisation based on the statutory materials for the end of Key Stage expectations