Writing at Lanesfield Primary School

The National Curriculum in English unites the vital skills of Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening and Drama. Confidence and competence in language use, both spoken and written are critical to school success, underpinning wellbeing and independence. At Lanesfield School we aim to offer high quality learning experiences where children can achieve their best and reach high standards in the subject area of English and in their use of Literacy across the curriculum.

 

Talk for Writing

At Lanesfield, we follow the ‘Talk for Writing’ programme to ensure that our pupils are fluent and confident writers. We aim to provide the skills for children to write meaningfully for a range of different purposes. Talk for Writing supports children to explore, through talk, the thinking and creative processes involved in being a writer. It is embedded at every phase of the teaching sequence which is structured to include teacher talk, supported pupil talk and independent pupil talk. We believe that Talk for Writing is an approach that goes beyond the development of children’s general speaking and listening skills – it allows children to explore the processes involved in being a writer, and extends oral rehearsal so that it becomes a draft for their written pieces. The approach supports the children to move from talk into writing. We expect this approach across the curriculum rather than just in literacy lessons.

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Classrooms across the school reflect how ‘Talk for Writing’ has become embedded. Classroom displays show clearly which genre is being studied and our displays show magpie walls, washing lines, which include the current examples of text maps, planning and toolkits.

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Talk for Writing follows a two weekly programme and across the year children are taught a range of both fiction and non-fiction forms of writing. Our literacy and grammar lessons cover the National Curriculum and reflect the principles of ‘Talk for Writing’. They are designed to offer diverse and exciting units of work and texts for all children to access. Literacy Medium Term Plans (MTP’s) are based on the 2014 National Curriculum. The children are assessed against Age Related Expectations and these are categorised as ‘Entering’, ‘Developing’, ‘Secure’ and ‘Mastery’.

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We not only focus on the content of the writing produced, but also the spelling and grammar. Spelling and grammar rules are embedded not only in Literacy lessons, but across our curriculum as a whole. There are five Literacy lessons a week and a separate grammar lesson once a week. We send individualised spellings home on a weekly basis and children are encouraged to write using ‘Kber’ handwriting style. Joining is expected as it frees up working memory to concentrate on more difficult aspects of writing. To ensure children become confident and fluent with their joins there is a separate handwriting lesson once a week where children can enjoy the art of perfecting their handwriting style.

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Find out more by reading the documents in Useful Links.

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