Victoria Road Primary School
Writing
Writing at Victoria Road Primary School
INTENT
At Victoria Road Primary School, we endeavor to create a love for writing. We want every child to leave our school with the skills of an excellent writer who:
- Has the ability to write with fluency and has an author’s voice;
- Can think about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and knows how they will achieve this;
- Has a sophisticated bank of vocabulary and a growing awareness of words and language;
- Can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing;
- Displays fluent transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated and spelt correctly using strategies taught to them.
- Re-reads, edits and improves their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability and better than the last using self-regulation and metacognition strategies.
Throughout their time at Victoria Road Primary School, children develop their skills by exploring a whole range of different genres through high quality texts. We focus on exploring a range of models of writing through reading engaging and high quality texts in both class and individual reading and use these to help the children self-regulate their own writing. It is important to note that we not only develop a real enjoyment of writing in literacy lessons but in all subjects across the curriculum. We expect the highest standards of writing every time a child writes in any subject.
IMPLEMENTATION
The writing curriculum is led and overseen by the writing lead. Our lead regularly celebrates the work carried out across the curriculum and this is also celebrated in displays across school, on our school twitter pages and in weekly celebration assemblies. Other opportunities are also taken advantage of in other curriculum areas, such as history, geography, science, PSHE and RE. Staff have worked alongside the writing lead to develop a long term overview of writing units for the year. These include fiction, non-fiction and poetry across each term. They are designed to be progressive in specific skills being taught as well as cover a range of age appropriate, progressive text types across the year, A range of high quality texts are used to support this. A cycle of lessons for each unit is carefully planned for following a bank of strategies in the teachers' toolkits such as Talk for Writing, IPEELL and Bob Cox (see literacy overview). Staff are clear about the Purpose and Audience of each unit and Text type (PAT). This is made explicit for the children too.
IMPACT
Our Writing Curriculum is designed to be good quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Tracking of knowledge throughout pieces of writing - drafts and final outcomes.
- Pupil discussions about their learning.
- A cycle of work that gradually releases scaffolding and promotes independence/self-regulation.
- Effective feedback systems.
Assessment is an on-going priority and we work closely to work collaboratively to moderate work with each other and across trust/cluster schools.
By the end of their time at Victoria Road, pupils will have experienced a range of high quality texts and genres of writing and be able to write for a range of purposes and audiences.
Impact is measured through assessment as well as book monitoring termly and pupil voice.