Our All Saints family shall ARISE and shine for the light of The Lord is upon us

 Writing at All Saints

(Writing, spelling, handwriting)

Literacy Manager –  Miss Daly

janel014@mastacademy.co.uk

Intent

English is an essential strand for the best education of our pupils at All Saints Church of England Primary School. It is the platform for accessing the whole curriculum and allows children to communicate, form friendships, respect each other, feel included and supported. Our English curriculum is broad, balanced and progressively sequenced ensuring that all our children achieve. We aim to deliver learning opportunities that enable our pupils to achieve their potential through an ambitious, inclusive and engaging curriculum, thus equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need for the next stage of their education. Their skills in English will enable them to connect to the global world that we are a part of. Children are provided with opportunities to work together consequently promoting their mental wellbeing, social development and enjoyment.   It is imperative that we model high standards of Literacy and have high expectations of our children.

We aim to ensure that all pupils:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, and participate in debate.
• acquire the cultural capital needed to prepare them for the next stage of their education.

Implementation

At All Saints we use Read, Write Inc (RWI) to teach phonics and reading.  This supports our youngest pupils to develop those crucial early reading skills and concepts about print. Our older children enjoy titles that are varied, topical and they can often be found exploring texts by popular authors. Read, Write Inc also helps develop spelling and writing skills.  We are very fortunate to have a RWI Consultant Trainer working alongside staff to ensure our pupils get the very best from their RWI sessions. RWI has a rigorous assessment programme, which ensures that needs of each child is being met either through intervention, catch up to be challenged.

All the children are grouped according to the RWI assessment framework. All Lower school children have a RWI session every morning and a RWI sounds blast lesson every afternoon

In EYFS we pair RWI with talk through stories to further develop the children’s comprehension skills. The children are encouraged to mark-make and apply their phonic knowledge through emergent and independent writing opportunities within the continuous provision and exciting provocations provided by their teachers during play to learn sessions.

In Key Stage one (KS1), children have phonics lessons five times a week. These phonics lessons include teaching handwriting, grammar, punctuation and spelling. They have a writing activity linked to their Cornerstones theme which encourages children to work through a sequence of writing-based activities differentiated to their level. KS1 also undertake an extended writing process twice each term.

In KS2, the children are taught in classes for all literacy lessons which are closely linked to their Cornerstones theme. They undertake an extended writing process once or twice each term. 

At All Saints the teaching of writing is purposeful, robust and shows clear progression for all children. Writing is mostly taught through the Cornerstones themes. We don’t use a scheme for writing but we ensure we meet the coverage laid out in the National Curriculum. We like to make writing fun, purposeful, relevant and challenging and get the children doing, talking, interacting, thinking, trying and editing. We know how important writing is and that it provides the foundations for every other subject, once children master writing it makes each piece of work much easier for them across all subjects. We also recognise and foster the relationship between reading and writing – the children who are avid readers tend to be those who cope well with story writing, reading great books is a natural way for children to become fantastic writers.

Every writing, spelling and handwriting lesson taught within school will contain a challenge for the children to complete when they have finished their main learning. We encourage children to try these and for some children we have made it clear these challenges are an expectation every lesson. Every piece of writing homework will contain a set challenge. We ask parents to encourage their child to complete it. All holiday homework will contain a writing, spelling or handwriting challenge on a ‘pick and mix’ sheet for the children to choose from. Curriculum challenges (completed as extra work during term time), based on cross curricular theme work, are designed to be open to interpretation and therefore can take the form of written work within many different genres. We want to allow every child to reach their potential by providing them opportunities to master their skills and apply them in a range of contexts.

Reading, writing, speaking and listening are the core skills within Literacy that we aim to develop within our school. The National Curriculum documents below contain details about what children in each year group must be taught in these areas. The school policy documents contain details of how our school teaches them.

Impact

As a result of our Literacy teaching at All Saints you will see:

• Children will enjoy reading and writing across a range of genres.
• Children of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately differentiated.
• They will progress well and attain with or above other children nationally.
• The will be happy, caring and resilient individuals who respond well to challenges.
• Children will use a wide vocabulary within their writing and spoken language.
• Children will write with a good awareness of their audience.
• Children will effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught.
• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading, spelling, grammar and composition at home.
• The skills our children learn in their literacy lessons will equip them to be effective learners in all aspects of the curriculum.
• Children will leave All Saints equipped with the skills needed for their secondary education with aspirations to succeed in 21^st century Britain.

What parents can do to help with their child’s writing at home        

• Revise your child’s spellings with them every night when they come home from school. 

• Look at the writing opportunities on your child's Knowledge Organiser and encourage them to complete these activities to the best of their ability.

• Look at the school’s handwriting cursive script with your child. Get them to apply it when writing at home. Log into Letter-join to practice handwriting patterns and cursive script. 

• Discuss new and adventurous words with your child, even if they can’t spell them accurately, they are still encouraged to use them in their writing and can win challenges through this. 

There are some links below with ideas of games and ideas to help you support your child. The most important thing is to get them enjoying writing, being confident and writing for a purpose. If you need any further support please let your child’s class teacher or me know.

Useful websites where children can practise Literacy skills in a fun way

Primary Games     BBC Bitesize     BBC Schools     Top Marks     Phonics Play    Roy The Zebra

Literacy Trust       Once Upon A Picture