Writing

Learning to write, will open up so many different opportunities for each individual pupil.  Being able to write gives each pupil a way to share their ideas, imagination and opinions with the world. 

The National Curriculum for each year group focuses on spoken language, transcription, composition, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. 

Spoken Language 

The national curriculum for English reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing.

Transcription

Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) and understanding the word structure and spelling structure of words.

Composition

Effective composition involves forming, 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. Writing also depends on fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting.

Please visit the EYFS page to find out more information about early writing at Crick Primary School.

Talk for Writing

At Crick we use Talk for Writing as our main teaching of writing . Pie Corbett explains a bit more about his approach and explains what Talk for Writing is. Take a look!

We love to really immerse the pupil in a text, learning it, acting it out and pulling it apart; reading as a reader and reading as a writer. This enables the children to develop their understanding of the pattern and rhythm of writing for different genres as well as being exposed to high quality vocabulary and texts. From this the pupils are engaged, excited and ready to write their own versions within different genres of writing. 

Here is a brief Overview of Talk for Writing:

Phase 1 – Imitation

Learning stories orally is a powerful tool for helping each child to internalise the language. Oral learning of texts involves the pupils in hearing and speaking the text and start to understand the rhythm of a text. These are taught in a multi-sensory manner, using story maps (visual representation), orally rehearsing  the text and key features (auditory) and actions (kinaesthetic). 

Phase 2 – Innovation
Once the pupils have heard, spoken, read and explored a model text, internalising it into their long-term working memory, then they are ready for the second phase which is known as ‘INNOVATION’. This is when the pupils are helped to create their own new version of the known text by using their ideas and imagination. 

Phase 3 – Independent Application 
This is where the pupils are expected to write more independently, drawing on all their learning and  letting their imagination go wild. When writing, less confident children may well rely on the initial model but more confident writers will draw upon many different sources. By this stage, the underlying patterns and structures begin to become ‘transferable’ so that they can be used in different situations and for different purposes.

Spellings

Spellings are tricky and are often remembered for a spelling test rather than keeping these in the children’s long term memory. We want to help children be able to learn spellings and embed them into their long term memory through retrieval practice. Retrieval practice is a technique where children recall what they have learnt. In simple terms, whilst we focus a lot of our time helping children get knowledge into their heads, retrieval practice is all about getting that knowledge back out there - strengthening retention and encouraging young learners to actively engage with, examine, and use what they have learnt. 

Common Exception Words

Common exception words are words that do not follow the common phonetic spelling rules that pupils learn.  Many of these exception words are used frequently, hence the use of 'common' in the name. Pupils are normally introduced to common exception words in their first year of primary school and throughout their time at Crick Primary School.

Handwriting 

At Crick, we follow the RWI Handwriting Scheme which links closely with how we teach Phonics.

 RWI teaches a casual cursive style.

Children are taught step by step by:

1.Associating a sound with a picture mnemonic                                                                                      

2.How to sit comfortably and hold a pencil in a tripod grip

3.Form lower case letters in the correct direction

4.Form lower case letters of the correct size

5.Join letters using two basic joins- diagonal and horizontal

Below are the phrases we use for letter formation: