Writing

Our Christian Values and Distinctiveness, alongside our School Mission Statement of ‘Learning, Growing and Inspiring through God’s Love and Grace’, are at the heart of our curriculum and all that we do at Samlesbury.

 

Writing at Samlesbury

Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum at Samlesbury. By the end of year 6 we intend our children to have developed a love of writing and to be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. At Samlesbury, we set high expectations for all our children to take pride in their work and have a fluent, cursive handwriting style alongside allowing their imaginations to flourish.  

 

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

John Keating

 

In order to help us to develop confident, enthusiastic writers who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and across a variety of contexts, our teaching of writing is often cross circular and linked to our class topics. This provides our children with regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Writing tasks are specific and meaningful, and often meet a purpose to engage children and to illustrate how their writing skills can be applied to real life contexts. Through high quality first teaching and dynamic feedback, which is part of every lesson and learning experience, children's success is celebrated as well as next steps which are nurtured through class and personal discussion with a child so that all pupil's know what their current goals and next steps are. These are based on the current year group objectives to ensure progress and target areas for support. 

Children learn spellings in school as part of their learning each week and these are expected to be used and applied in their writing. Common Exception words and high frequency words are shared with parents with the expectation that these will be  worked on at home, as part of home learning, so that by the end of a key stage/end of year 4, the set spellings (based on the national curriculum lists) will have been mastered. These are tested termly and the results shared with parents to celebrate what is now known and to highlight words still to be learnt. Furthermore, classes have words of the week to extend and embed new vocabulary.  

Additionally, spelling is taught daily in Key Stage 1, in phonics lessons.  Children who need additional support with spelling receive a variety of interventions that are tailored to address their gaps.

Pupils will make good progress from their own personal starting points. By the end of year 6 they will be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Our pupils will acquire a wide vocabulary and have a strong command of the written word. Most importantly, they will develop a love of writing and be well equipped for the rest of their education.

 

Grammar

   Key Stage One - Glossary of Terms

    Key Stage Two - Glossary of Terms

 

Writing in Year 1

The prime focus, in Year 1, is on securing children’s knowledge and understanding of Phonics.  By the end of the year, children should be able to read, write and blend all 44 phonemes. Equipped with this knowledge, plus an ability to spell “common exception words” (such as the, some, my, because) and to add simple prefixes and suffixes (un-,–ing, -ed, -er, -est), the children should be able to write simple sentences that make sense, begin with a capital letter, and end with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. They should be able to join words and clauses using and. By term 3, children should be able to sequence sentences to form short narratives with a simple structure, e.g. a beginning, a middle, and an end, and to write instructions in the correct order. By the end of the year, children in Year 1 should start to show some variety in sentence openings (While… When… Where... Fortunately… Unfortunately… Sadly…). Lower and upper case letters should be correctly formed.

 

Writing in Year 2

The key focus in Year 2 is on enriching the sentences that children write, with a wider range of more complex sentence opening phrases (such as In a land far away…  Later that day… To his amazement…  As soon as…), interesting adjectives to describe people, objects and settings, and interesting adverbs to describe actions. They should be able to check that their writing makes sense (using the present and past tense appropriately) and is correctly punctuated with full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks, question marks and commas in lists). Children should be secure in their spelling of common exception words, common homophones (e.g. which and witch; wear and where); and words with contractions (such as it’s, can’t, won’t, they’re, etc.). Children are also taught to use the possessive apostrophe in Year 2. Lower and upper case letters should be correctly sized and joined.

 

Writing in Year 3

Children learn to write in paragraphs in Year 3. These paragraphs should include a variety of simple, complex and compound sentences, with a range of conjunctions (meanwhile, during, following, when, if, because, although, however…). Pupils should start to include interesting and appropriate vocabulary that creates impact or clarifies information (e.g. a loud, wailing noise; stare, tremble, slither; magnificent, unbelievable).  Common homophones and near-homophones should be correctly spelt (e.g. their, there, they’re; your, you’re; where, were; allowed, aloud; to, two, too), and children will learn to spell words ending in -tion, -sion, -cian and  -ssion. In Year 3, children start to learn to use speech marks in dialogue, colons before a list and commas after fronted adverbials. Lower and upper case letters should be correctly sized and joined.

 

Writing in Year 4

Children in Year 4 continue to focus on enhancing cohesion and adding impact to their writing. They do this by learning to ensure that paragraphs have relevant and varied openings, and are used for a new subject, time, place, or person.  Children’s non-fiction writing should contain an introduction and a conclusion.  Children also continue to practise selecting strong vocabulary for effect and precision; weak verbs such as ‘got’, ‘said’ and ‘went’ should be replaced.  Most common words, homophones and words with prefixes and suffixes should be spelt correctly. By the end of Year 4, punctuation of speech should be secure and reporting clauses should be used correctly. By term 3, the comma should also be used correctly to punctuate subordinate clauses and fronted adverbials. Lower and upper case letters should be correctly sized and joined.

 

Writing in Year 5

By Year 5, children should be planning and writing independently, taking account of their audience. They should be checking and editing their writing to ensure that devices, such as sentence and paragraph openers, lend it cohesion; sentences convey meaning clearly; and vocabulary adds impact.  Spellings should be checked independently. Correctly punctuated dialogue should convey character and enhance action in story-writing. Sentences should be varied in structure, demonstrating an ability to include clauses appropriately within, at the start, and at the end of them. Children are taught to accurately use a wider range of punctuation, including brackets, dashes and commas for parenthesis. Lower and upper case letters should be correctly sized and joined.

 

Writing in Year 6

Writing in Year 6 should be independently planned, drafted and edited.  Adverbials and subordinate clauses should enhance cohesion, and adventurous vocabulary and grammatical structures should create impact and reflect the level of formality required.  Sentences should continue to be varied in structure, demonstrating an ability to include clauses appropriately within, at the start, and at the end of them.  Children learn the difference between passive and active styles and should demonstrate both, appropriately, in their writing.  Children learn how to use the colon and semi-colon and should show a wide variety of accurately used punctuation in their writing. Lower and upper case letters should be correctly sized and joined.