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Christ Church C of E VC Infant School
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Being an Author
"You can make anything by writing." C.S.Lewis
Lead Author: Claire Mills
Intent
At CCI we strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners. We value writing as a fundamental communication skill that enables our children to share their creativity, ideas and emotions. We aim to provide a range of opportunities for children that both excite and motive them. We do this through our choice of texts, experiences and also writing opportunities within our enquiry based curriculum.
In our Early Years we immerse children in the magic of stories using Greg Bottril’s Drawing Club. It is through Drawing Club that we enrich their language skills, support pre-writing skills and mark making and unlock their own imaginations using quality and engaging stories. We develop their gross and fine motor skills through their interests and also in structured sessions when working alongside adults. We provide purposeful writing opportunities in our indoor and outdoor space to encourage those skills to also develop through their own independent engagement.
Our intentions in writing are for children to:
- Engage and capture their imagination through use of high-quality texts.
- Support their learning and application of fundamental skills through the clear teaching model ‘I do, We do, You do’.
-Write for a purpose, linking their writing to the current enquiry where appropriate
-See themselves as real writers, referring to themselves as ‘Authors,’ and publish their work to share with others
-Acquire the ability for them to organise and plan their written work
-Develop those, all important, editing skills by refining their work and striving for their absolute best to meet the needs of the audience.
Implementation
What does writing look like at CCI?
| EYFS | ||
| Phonics | Phonics is taught each day - This is an opportunity for children to practise phoneme / grapheme correspondence, learn new sounds and revisit and use those sounds they have already learnt. As part of introducing each new sound, careful modelling of the grapheme is given to support their formation. | |
| Drawing Club | Children are invited to join drawing Club twice each week and work alongside adults as part of a small group. They follow a clear sequence of teaching in order to introduce the character and setting of a weekly story. This involves clear modelling of not only their drawing skills but also modelling of words and sentences appropriate to the stage of their learning journey. A ‘secret code’ can be added which enables children to add their own imaginative element to their picture and bring their character or setting to life. | |
| Modelled Writing | Adults in EYFS model how to write from left to write and how to form letters with the children though both phonics and writing sessions. We begin using our writing tools such as our sound mats and editing checklist with our younger children so that they are experiencing editing and improving from the very beginning. | |
| Continuous Provision | Children have a range of writing tools (pencils, chalk, whiteboards and pens, sand to write in) both inside and outside their classrooms, giving them the opportunity to use their developing writing skills as they play. We try to make those opportunities as ‘real’ as possible by encouraging them to apply those skills as ‘Scientists’, ‘Engineers’, ‘Designers’ and also role play that they see at home – shopping lists, birthday cards, thank you notes. | |
| Gross and Fine Motor skills | Children develop their large and fine motor skills though daily activities that are fun and engaging both indoors and outdoors. For example, Go Noodle, Dough-disco, using the bikes and trikes and using the apparatus in the hall. | |
| Stories and rhyme time | Each week children have a new ‘rhyme of the week’ that they learn as a class to develop their communication and language skills. During our story time, teachers provide weekly opportunities for storytelling to engage and inspire their imaginations. | |
| Year 1 | ||
| Phonics and handwriting |
| |
| Writing Sessions | Children work towards a final outcome such as writing a thank you letter or a story. This is supported by either a high-quality text or an experience in school, such as making something for instructions or visiting somewhere as part of a recount. As part of the teaching sequence, children practise grammar skills and have opportunity to apply these regularly. Teachers follow the strategy of ‘I do, We do and you do’ to share clear modelling of expectations and give children the confidence to develop their own independence in writing. Each day is a planned writing session and this can vary from engaging with a book, acting out characters emotions to practising a grammatical skill, depending on the teaching sequence. Children will be writing daily as part of either their writing session, sentence writing in phonics or in their enquiry sessions. | |
| Spellings | Children are given a list of five spellings for two consecutive weeks, followed by a recap week to embed the previous ten spellings given. Children are given time each day to practise their spellings in fun and engaging ways. Spellings are taken from the National Curriculum and include common exception words as well as the spelling rules. | |
| Year 2 | ||
| SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) and handwriting | SPaG is taught each day and these skill sessions feed into writing session when children can use the skills they have been learning. These sessions include learning about prefixes, suffixes and punctuation patterns. Children are encouraged to develop their joined handwriting style with correct formation of each letter increasing the flow through SPaG as well as discrete handwriting sessions. | |
| Writing Sessions | Children write daily, either as part of their writing session, through their SPaG session or enquiry learning. Writing is planned through a series of sessions that works towards a final outcome such as writing a thank you letter or a set of instructions. Children are supported by literature- rich texts that develop their love of storytelling as well as developing their language and writing style. Teachers model using the ‘I do, We do, You do strategy’ to support our writers in their independence. | |
Spellings | Six spellings are sent home each week to practise common exception words and also the spelling rules as set out in the National Curriculum spelling appendix. | |
Impact
Writing progress is monitored each writing session as teachers support and provide next step feedback to children as they are writing.
Three-yearly assessment ensures that children are all developing their skills steadily and provides feedback about any gaps that need additional provision to fill. Children have differentiated challenge in writing and termly reviews allow teachers to also stretch learners to reach their full potential.
As a school we moderate writing across year groups, across the school and with other schools in our hub, ensuring our assessment is both accurate and fair.
Writing Policy
Click on the link below to download our writing policy.