Writing

Intent

At Spring Lane Primary, our inclusive Talk for Writing curriculum aims to nurture confident, creative, and skilled writers by harnessing the power of spoken language as the foundation for writing. By using oracy as the foundation for writing, we ensure that language development is accessible and meaningful for all groups of children, including those with English as an additional language and special education needs.

Our intent is to:

• Embed cultural and social capital in the foundations of the literacy curriculum
• Support language development through oracy and prioritising vocabulary
• Develop independent and creative writers
• Lay strong foundations of phonics, spelling, grammar and handwriting.
  
• Develop writing for real-life contexts
• Empower children to become resillient authors, through drafting, redrafting and developing their writing.

Implementation

Writing units of work, which span across fiction, non–fiction and poetry, are carefully sequenced and aligned to help children make learning connections. We use a range of high standard model texts to ensure our curriculum is aspirational for our children. Classrooms are resourced with dictionaries and thesauruses to support learning. 

We have designed our curriculum so that all of our children are exposed to a diverse range of texts which promote our SMSC, school and British values. We use texts with a broad range of characters/backgrounds as well as historical settings, modern day settings and fictitious settings.

What is the Talk for Writing approach?

The Talk for Writing approach, established by Pie Corbett and supported by Julia Strong,  enables children to imitate the key language they need for a particular topic orally before they try reading and analysing it. Through fun activities that help them rehearse the tune of the language they need, followed by shared writing to show them how to craft their writing, children are helped to write in the same style as the focus text, developing confidence and a passion for writing. The approach moves from dependence towards independence, with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully. 

The approach is built upon three key stages that are revisited each time a new text is introduced: imitation, innovation and independent application.

Imitation

During this stage the children take part in a selection of activities to help them to internalise the pattern of language within the focus text. This is often followed by talking a focus text, supported visually by a text map and physical movements to help the children recall the story or non-fiction piece. In this way, the children hear the text, say it for themselves and enjoy it before seeing it written down. Once they have internalised the language of the text, they are in a position to read the text and start to think about the key ingredients that help to make it work. Children learn about the structure of the text by ‘boxing up’ each section and they create a toolkit which helps them to make sure they have the key ingredients within their independent writing later in the final stage.

Innovation

When children know the text well they move onto the innovation stage where they begin to merge their ideas and those from the focus text. They begin by altering their text maps and orally rehearse what they want to say, creating their own version of the focus text. The key activity in this stage is shared writing, helping the children to write their own by “doing one together” first. This process enables the children to write their own versions through developing their ability to generate good words and phrases in a safe way by continually revisiting key language and ideas from the focus text.

Independent Application

In this stage the children write their own invented story based on the ideas and key language of the focus text. They use the toolkit that was created in the innovation stage to act as a checklist, making sure they have included all of the good ingredients that they have learnt from the unit of work. They plan their writing using the text map or boxing up format and then use this as a framework to keep referring back to as they write. At this stage the children are brimming with ideas and key language that they want to get on the page.

Please see the link below for further information about our writing approach:

https://www.talk4writing.com/about/

Impact

The impact of our writing curriculum is measured through:

• Pupil outcomes where evidence is gathered in the following ways: pupil voice interviews, book scrutinies, learning walks, discussions with staff etc.
• Using formal assessment to ensure children reach expectations for grammar, punctuation and spelling.
• Teacher assessment of writing using independently written pieces to provide evidence of national curriculum skills and understanding
• Monitoring of progress from year to year ensuring pupils remain ‘on track’ from their starting point

Futures are shaped at Spring Lane Primary because children...

• Show they are independent, creative and resillient writers.
• Communicate effectively through the spoken and written word, adapting for purpose and audience.
• Use wide and varied vocabulary to achieve varied effects in their writing.
• Organise their ideas to develop cohesion in their writing.
• Apply their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns to help them spell new words.
• Apply the foundations of grammar to their writing, with the reader in mind.
• Take pride in their presentation and develop a legible, joined, increasingly efficient handwriting style.
• Draft, edit and improve their work, recognising this as the most important part of being an author.