Intent

At Ilchester Community Primary School, our goal is to inspire and support children to become confident, motivated, and capable writers. Writing skills are vital for children as they enable effective communication, the expression of ideas, and engagement with the world. Writing is utilised across nearly all subjects in the curriculum, and we want children to perceive writing as meaningful and purposeful, allowing them to share their thoughts, imagination, and creativity with others.

In our daily English lessons, writing instruction focusses on two key aspects:

• Transcription (spelling and handwriting) 
• Composition (articulating and structuring ideas in both speech and writing).

It is crucial that the teaching at Ilchester Community Primary School enhances students' proficiency in both areas. The ability to write down ideas fluently relies on effective transcription, which includes quickly and accurately spelling words by understanding the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) as well as the structure of words (morphology) and their spelling conventions (orthography). Effective composition entails forming, articulating, and communicating ideas, organising them coherently for the reader. This process requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose, context, and a broad knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Additionally, writing relies on fluent, legible, and eventually speedy handwriting.

In the Foundation Stage, children begin learning how to form letters correctly. They are encouraged to use their phonics knowledge to write words that correspond to their spoken sounds. In Key Stage 1, they start writing for various purposes, including stories, informational texts, and poetry, and they learn to re-read their work to ensure it makes sense. As students progress into Key Stage 2, they enhance their abilities to plan, draft, and review their writing. They learn to identify the audience and purpose of their work, using grammar and vocabulary effectively.

To keep writing purposeful and engaging, we offer children authentic opportunities to write and share their work. They explore a diverse range of genres, often inspired by high-quality texts. By providing meaningful reasons to write and opportunities to celebrate their achievements, we aim to foster a love for words, language, and writing.

Implementation

Our annual long-term planning outlines a selection of high-quality texts designed to inspire children to read and write, encouraging engagement with a variety of genres. Each term, we provide writing overviews for every year group, detailing the expected writing outcomes, the SLN Teacher Assessment Framework statements to be covered in each unit, as well as the National Curriculum objectives and key vocabulary for that year's group.

Medium-term planning is organised by unit, following the teaching sequence of Read – Analyse – Plan – Write – Review over several weeks. Each writing outcome clearly identifies its intended audience and purpose. Weekly short-term planning exemplifies the objectives derived from the medium-term plans, highlighting differentiation where appropriate and ensuring progression throughout the week. Additionally, we have plans for discrete areas of English instruction that occur alongside daily English lessons, such as whole-class reading, phonics, and spelling.

Throughout school, we emphasise the formal structures of English, including grammatical detail, punctuation, and spelling. Teachers model writing strategies and phonics during shared writing sessions. Guided writing sessions target the specific needs of both groups and individuals, while children are provided with regular opportunities for extended independent writing across various purposes and subjects in the curriculum.

In Reception, children participate in a diverse range of writing activities. Our long-term planning curriculum details the texts that will be covered throughout the year. Writing opportunities may include watching a teacher model writing their names or sentences they have spoken, engaging in writing during role play, or documenting models they have created in the construction area. Writing can occur at any time during the day and in any part of the setting. We maintain continuous writing provisions in both indoor and outdoor areas, allowing children to explore writing through play.

Shared Writing and Modelled Writing

Shared writing is a whole class activity where the teacher models the writing of a text. In shared writing, the children will contribute to the text by suggesting words or sentences to be used; they are critical partners for the teacher. The teacher demonstrates how to write and explains decisions. They will model thinking, rehearsing sentences, writing and re-reading, constantly generating words and ideas. Across the key stages, teachers will focus on the purpose, audience, level of formality, structure and organisation of the text. A particular aspect of spelling or grammar and punctuation work provides an additional focus depending on the objectives and targets being worked on at that time.

Guided Writing

Guided writing is the mid-way point between independent and shared writing. It is the teacher or teaching assistant guiding a group of children through a piece of writing, helping and supporting them. This is extremely focused and addresses the needs of a specific group, allowing the adult to give immediate feedback on the successes and areas for development.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Grammar is most effective when taught in the context of reading and writing; either in the context of the linguistic demands of a particular genre or the writing needs of a child. We take a pragmatic approach to the teaching of grammar and believe effective grammar teaching takes place in meaningful contexts. Playing with words, investigations, puns, jokes, and rhymes can all enrich and inform grammatical knowledge and understanding and develop a genuine interest in how language works. Timetables and planning during our English sessions will show evidence of SPAG starters that are taught in context and allow the children to revisit prior learning.

Editing

At Ilchester Community Primary School, we understand the importance of editing writing. The editing process involves children drawing upon everything they have learnt up to that given point. In order for children to become independent, effective editors, direct teaching of this skill is needed. For this reason, children will be taught how to edit in a variety of ways. Editing sessions may take part or all of an English session. The session may involve editing as a whole class, in guided smaller groups, with peers, one-to-one or individual editing of the children’s own writing. Teachers may use additional resources such as editing stations or editing hats. The children will edit in blue pencil at KS1 and blue pen at KS2. We want our children to understand the importance of editing and the idea that focusing on improving one aspect of their work at a time does improve their writing as a whole.

Assessment

It is important that the children are assessed regularly in order to identify any gaps in learning quickly. This will allow us to put in the necessary support for children who could be at risk of falling behind.

Every child will have a piece of independent writing assessed every half-term using the Somerset Literacy Network (SLN) Assessment Framework document. Outside of English lessons, there are numerous opportunities for children to apply their writing skills across all areas of the curriculum and these pieces may be used for assessment too. Children in Years 1 to 5 take termly Testbase assessments for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. Year 6 students are prepared for SATs with mock papers.

Regular monitoring of the assessment outcomes allows teachers and practitioners to ensure that all children are making expected progress. This information is also used to identify children who are not making expected progress and therefore, early intervention can be put in place.

Intervention

Through careful monitoring and tracking, practitioners are able to identify children who are not making the expected progress and therefore need intervention to catch up. Depending on the needs of individuals, this may include specific phonic and spelling support, handwriting support and additional individual or small group tutoring. It is important that children who are struggling to learn to write not only need to catch up with their peers, but also to continue to make progress.

Inclusion

Our aim at Ilchester Community Primary School is that every child’s needs are catered for, and every child is given the chance to succeed and become a competent writer. It is our aim to give every child the opportunity to experience success in learning and to be the best that they can be. Differentiated work, appropriate to individual children’s needs, is provided in the independent work during the day and also during intervention sessions. S.E.N.D pupils have Learning Passports and APDR documents, which may include specific literacy targets.