Our aim at Springbank is to develop confident individuals who can draw upon a plethora of skills from their learning in order to produce high quality writing. In order to promote successful learning, we produce engaging lessons based around the exceptional texts and topics that lie at the heart of our teaching. Through the use of a text or topic as a stimulus, the children build personalised links within their learning and recognise purpose for their writing. Children are challenged in terms of their vocabulary and grammar/punctuation to create pieces of writing of which they can be proud.
Celebration of writing is at the heart of our aspiration for children to see themselves as authors. This comes in many forms: children are allowed the time to share their writing and perform it orally for an audience, finished pieces are celebrated to develop pride in the finished article and regular opportunities are sought to meet and learn from established authors in order to ‘normalise’ the process of writing.
We believe that if children can be immersed in the world of their writing then they are not having to stretch beyond the capacity of their imagination in order to succeed. Simply, we bridge the gap between the child’s imagination and the written tasks so that they are able to use their knowledge and skills to creatively thrive.
Implementation
The focus for our writing is to produce engaging lessons based around the texts and topics that lie at the heart of our English teaching. By using the text or topic as a stimulus, we are able to provide the children with purpose within their writing and create a personalised link for the child. Children are challenged in terms of their vocabulary and grammar/punctuation to create pieces of writing of which they can be proud. If children can be immersed in the world of their writing then they are not having to stretch beyond the capacity of their imagination in order to succeed. We need to bridge the gap between the child’s imagination and the task so that they are able to produce quality writing.
Everything we write in our classrooms relates back to the overall learning. Whether this is topic or text based (or both) we model our writing accordingly.
Units of writing may last between two and three weeks. Writing lessons take place three times a week, although not all of these lessons may always contain writing.
It is hugely important that we make time for children to:
It is hugely important that we make time for adults to:
Working walls provide children with support in their writing. Working walls are situated in full view of all children. The purpose of the working wall is to support learning, not celebrate. Working walls contain examples of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation that children can use, built-up during teaching.
Impact
The impact on our children is that at the end of key stage 2, when children leave Farsley Springbank, a high percentage of individuals (above those of local and national averages) achieve age-related expectations, with a number achieving the greater depth standard. Sustained progression is the year-on-year focus and this is measured through consistent internal moderation both alongside senior leaders and other schools within our local area.
Through immersion in high-quality texts and storytelling alongside motivating writing opportunities our children become confident writers within a selection of genres (both fiction and non-fiction) and cement transferrable life-long skills and a love of the written word.