Writing

‘Teachers should develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject. English is both a subject in its own right and the medium for teaching; for pupils, understanding the language provides access to the whole curriculum. Fluency in the English language is an essential foundation for success in all subjects.’ - National Curriculum 2014

At Cherry Tree, we aim to deliver a high-quality English curriculum that gives children the best ability to become confident, literate, successful members of society with a deep love and understanding of English language and literature.

Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum at Cherry Tree. 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 incorporate many approaches to teach writing, but our main ones include ‘I am a Clever Writer’ and ‘Talk for Writing’.

I am a Clever Writer

Identifies the precise steps each child needs to make to improve their writing; it empowers the teacher to know where the child is working. This helps the teachers know where the children are going and where they have come from. This approach also empowers the children and becomes their steps to success for writing; it ensures that the children know exactly what they need to include in their writing to be successful. The children will always be able to verbalise their steps to success and will always be able to discuss the progress that they have made. I am a Clever Writer provides children with the tools to self-evaluate their writing, and ensures that children are aware of their own steps to success and this holds them to account.

Talk for Writing

A quality text is introduced and read to the children. Together the class may learn to tell the story. To help the children retell the story, a multi-sensory approach is used which is appropriate for the age and the ability of the children:

Imitation

As the children learn the stories, they develop the use of specific sentence structures and language patterns that suit the text type.

The principle is that if a child can tell a story, they will be able to write a story.

Innovation

The children explore different ways they could change aspects of the original text, for example changing characters, setting or writing from a different point of view. They then make changes to their story map and orally tell this new story. Through shared and guided writing, the children write this new version in manageable sections.

This stage is very supportive so children gain confidence and know what they need to do in order to get better.

Invention

In this final stage, the children use all the skills they have learnt so far to write an independent piece.

There is a freedom to draw upon their own ideas, or they can ‘hug closely’ to the original shared text should they need to. Teachers use this task to assess how much progress the children have made.

During the sequence of writing, children will complete different task which involve a:

Cold Write

Children will complete, in their Knowledge Journals, an unsupported writing opportunity of the genre that is about to be taught. Whilst the Cold Write is unsupported, there may be a need to provide a stimulus for the children to enable content. This could take the form of a video, discussion or information text etc. Support given must avoid the features of the genre to be completed.

Star Writes

Children will have pieces of work in their Knowledge Journals that are based on the skills they are learning- these could be as short as a single paragraph- depending on the skill involved.

Warm Write

Children produce their final piece of writing for the genre in their Knowledge Journals. They will have the opportunity to demonstrate the progress they have made in writing based upon the high-quality teaching received within lessons.

Additional Pieces

In addition to the Cold Writes, Star Writes and Warm Writes, it is expected that the children will complete a number of additional topic based pieces of work in their Knowledge Journals. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. At Cherry Tree, we set high expectations for all our children to take pride in their work and have a fluent, cursive handwriting style (using Teach Handwriting), alongside allowing their imaginations to flourish.

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-curricular 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. Every half term, teachers set each child a personalised target through conferencing with them individually and identifying what they have achieved and how to improve on their next piece of writing. Differentiation will focus on the assessment descriptors for each year group, alongside the needs of each child. In this way, children will be given an appropriate level of challenge. This can be achieved by; modifying resources to match a child’s needs; altering the task so that it matches where a child is in their learning; giving additional resources, clues or adult support to access and promote positive outcomes. Sometimes, it will be appropriate for differentiation to be by the outcome.

Every child from Year 1 to Year 6 has a Spelling Passport, this stays with them as they move through their primary school life. This allows the children to be tested at their ability level, not just the year group they are in. The passport will identify the Common Exception/ High Frequency words that the children can spell, along with the statutory spellings and homophones.

Children learn spellings at home each week and these are tested in school. Children from Years 1 to 6 have spellings set for them electronically on Spelling Shed, these same spellings are also sent home weekly via paper form. The teaching of spelling skills and patterns are taught weekly in class.

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Cherry Tree Primary School

Cherry TreePrimary School