Hillside Primary School
Writing
Everything has a story. The wider curriculum is made up of stories. History consists of life stories, Geography is the story of people and places. Science is the story of what and how, RE the story of belief and culture. Children not only need to be able to read and comprehend information, they also need to form opinions and questions about what they read. We do this by providing diverse and informative texts, introducing different writing styles and opinions from all curriculum areas.
Competence and confidence in literacy, will come from progress across the whole curriculum. Promoting language and literacy development across all subjects is manageable by combining the teaching of literacy with different subject areas. Through teaching reading, writing and grammar through all curriculum areas children will learn to explain their thinking, debate their ideas and read and write at a level which will help them to develop all their skills. Careful consideration and sequencing of learning will ensure children are provided with the opportunities to develop these skills and apply them to a wide range of situations. Aim for lessons to last 50 minutes so there is enough time to give feedback in the lesson.
Writing Fluency
To help our children to become familiar with common exception words and new vocabulary, we do a daily speed writing session. As with the fluency reading (see section 3), children will work against the clock to write as many words as they can in one-minute. This session should also be used to reinforce their handwriting.
The Writing Process
Before teaching writing, have a clear idea of you want the children to produce. Write an example of what a good one looks like (WAGOLL). This allows you to think about all the ingredients needed (technical aspects) to compose the text. Write up a word bank with vocabulary and a variety of sentence openers. Give children the opportunity to practice using these to help cement/reinforce the language throughout the unit.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary used in fiction writing can be organised and presented to children in different ways for example words to do with the senses, thoughts, actions, feelings and dialogue, this language development is support through the use of widgets.
Children will often be given the opportunity to orally rehearse how to use new vocabulary (play word vocabulary snap, bingo or vocabulary charades. Ask -Which other words do we know that sound/look like this? Synonyms? Antonyms? How many syllables? Draw it. Write it. Use it in sentence).
- Shades of meaning
- Pupils sort words into degrees of meaning. They discuss the intensity and shades of different synonyms on a scale.
- Write the words on a thermometer
- Organise words into positive and negative for example glare v scan
- Build sentences on a washing line using different colours for different word classes.
- Word banks
- Widgets
- Use the descriptosaurus
Edit writing
Using the success criteria children learn how to edit their work. Children identify what the best bits are, is there anything they could improve? Are there any mistakes?’
