Writing
Writing at Willow Brook- Rationale
We seek to enable children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes by ensuring that they have access to a range of high quality model texts that children can immerse themselves in and use a model for their own writing. We use high quality children’s literature that links to our Connected Curriculum themes.
In Reception and Key Stage 1 children also follow the Read Write Inc Get Writing! activities. This gives each child the knowledge, ability and confidence to write words and sentences in small steps before progressing onto longer, more complex sentences and paragraphs.
Handwriting is taught during the Read Write Inc lessons each morning where the focus is on correct letter formation and size. We then teach a cursive handwriting style from the summer term in Year 2 all the way through to Year 6 where children begin to develop their own style based on the joins learnt from a young age.
We use ‘No more marking‘ to compare our writing to other schools throughout the year. This allows us to compare our children’s independent writing against a national sample of over 150,000 pupils.
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling
At Willow Brook, we teach grammar, punctuation and spelling in a consistent and structured fashion. Weekly grammar lessons are held covering areas that link to our type of writing. This enables the grammar taught to then be used in context. We ensure that grammatical concepts are revisited and built upon from year to year and that we regularly and accurately assess the progress and attainment of our children.
We follow the Spelling Scheme provided by Spelling Shed to ensure that our children learn to spell words in a way that meets the requirements of the National Curriculum. Teachers set weekly spelling lists and test children each week on them. We record progress by assessing children’s recall of set lists of words, including spelling rules and words from English Appendix One of the National Curriculum, on a termly basis.