At Saint James, we encourage children to be independent writers for a range of audiences and purposes across different text types. Pupils will be taught to apply their writing skills across all curriculum subjects and themes which have been carefully developed around quality, challenging texts.
Through our writing journeys, we develop the skills children will need to study after they leave us, to take part in society and to be successful in whichever career pathway they choose.
Children at Saint James learn to be global citizens and through our writing curriculum we aim to give them the skills they need to make positive change in their local and global community.
We deliver HQIT (high quality inclusive teaching) within our writing lessons to enable all children to be supported and challenged so that they make progress. Teachers use a variety of techniques to support children with their individual specific needs. Our writing is taught in flexible groups to target children at their current attainment, offering well differentiated task design. Teacher’s plan pre-teaching sessions and high quality interventions.
Writing journeys focus around a high quality carefully selected diverse range of text drivers, which can be a book, poem, real life speech/report or short video. Children follow a three part writing journey, stimulate and generate (immersion/vocabulary), practise sift and sort (grammar in context) and the writing outcome (for a range of purpose, audiences, forms and effects). Links are made across the curriculum and children become courageous advocates.
The stimulate and generate phase of the writing journey is to give the children a purpose to write and hook them into the writing journey. This enables them to talk passionately about their writing. We encourage writing in all subjects in the wider curriculum to enable children to apply their skills to a range of interests. Classrooms have writing displays that engage and support children with their writing, promoting a love of writing throughout the school.
At Saint James, we teach PenPals handwriting scheme and link this to the dittys they learn in RWI. Children then practise and apply this skill in all subjects to earn their pen license. To ensure they have the gross and fine motor skills they need to write neatly, we use a range of exercises to develop these. During writing lessons, we edit with a handwriting focus so that we can apply taught skills in our writing.
We teach grammar in the context of the writing outcome in our writing journeys. The second part of the writing journey focusses on progressively building the skills they will need to write their final outcome from word to phrase to sentence level. They always edit and improve their writing for grammar. We use a range of HQIT in grammar focussed writing lessons enabling children to be supported and challenged. Mastery task design promote greater depth thinking and use of CPA makes it engaging and inclusive for all.
Children write in all areas of the curriculum and are challenged to apply their taught skills within these lessons. Pen licenses are only given when the children’s handwriting in all areas is neat and joined. Through our wider curriculum, children are given opportunities to use their writing skills to become courageous advocates.
We identify tier 2 and 3 vocabulary to teach in each writing journey and across the wider curriculum. We use a range of approaches to teach it at the start of the writing journey and then practise and apply the new vocabulary throughout. Our classrooms are vocabulary rich, enabling the children to refer to this resource and apply it across the curriculum. We aim to fill the vocabulary gap through pre-teaching vocabulary, extra opportunities for practise and greater modelling of new words.
Our spelling teaching builds on RWI knowledge. We teach spelling rules using visual, orthographic, etymological, phonemic and morphemic techniques. Our spelling lessons follow a revise, teach, practise, apply structure and cover a balance of identified diagnostic need and the national curriculum. Children with specific needs have personalised spelling rules/lists with additional intervention. Children edit all work for spellings using the spelling wall, electronic spell checkers, sound charts, word banks, teacher feedback and dictionaries.
Weekly home learning is sent home via SeeSaw on a Thursday, allowing parents to support their children with their weekly English and spelling home learning. Parents are informed half termly of what is going to be covered through our curriculum overviews. Each year group invite parents to workshops where they learn about the English curriculum and how they can support their child. Individual feedback is given to parents at parents evening, where they are informed about their child’s attainment and learn how they can support them at home.
Across the school, text drivers have been carefully selected by class teachers with support from the English leader, ensuring we have a range of text types, authors, genres and a diverse range of characters and settings. Text drivers provide the motivation and purpose for writing and sometimes act a WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) for the final writing outcome.
We have carefully put together progression of skill documents for writing to ensure children are making the progress they should with key writing skills through the school. We have also carefully planned text driver across the curriculum, showing clear progression in writing.
The impact on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. Teaching writing through writing journeys means children are becoming more confident writers and by the time they are in upper Key Stage 2, most purposes of writing are familiar to them and the teaching can focus on creativity, writer’s craft, sustained writing and manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills.
Moderated teacher assessment is showing that most children at Saint James are achieving in English at age-related expectations. Each year we have children achieving at a greater depth in writing KS1 and KS2 and are working hard to develop this further through a mastery curriculum.
As all aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum, cross curricular writing standards have also improved and skills taught in the English lesson are transferred into other subjects; this shows consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific grammar, punctuation and grammar objectives. We hope that as children move on from Saint James to further their education and learning, that their creativity, passion for English and high aspirations travel with them and continue to grow and develop as they do. We want to give them the skills they need in writing so that they can be courageous advocates and make positive change in the local and global society.
A summary of the Writing curriculum can be found in the accordian container below:
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
Oi Frog
Naughty Bus
Lost and Found
Lost in the Toy Museum
Jack Frost
How to Catch a star
Whatever Next
Eliza and the Moonchild
There's a Lion in my Cornflakes
The Selfish Crocodile
Thank You for looking after Our Pets
Small Mouse Big City
The Day the Crayons came Home
The Snail and the Whale
Little Red
Where the Wild Things Are
Dear Greenpeace
The Bear and the Piano
The Bear and the Piano the Dog and the Fiddle
One Day on our Blue Planet
Toby and the Great Fire of London
The Crayon's Christmas
You Wouldn't Want to be in the Great Fire of London
Katie in London
The Queen's Orang-utan
David Attenborough
The Great Explorer
Samson's Titanic journey
The Story of the Titanic for Children
Anna Hibiscus
Jack and the Baked Bean Stalk
Inside the Villains
One Plastic Bag
The Hunter
Dolphin Boy
Stone Age Boy
Winters Child
Survival Camp
The Iron Man
The List Thing
Roman Tales The Fatal Fire
Roman Invasion
I am the Seed that grew the Tree
Leon and the Place Between
Historium
The Royal Rabbits of London
Marcy and the Riddle of the sphinx
Journey
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Greenling
Oliver Twist
Barnabus Project
Range of recipe books
The Raft
Fox and Deep Sea Quest
Island
How to Train your Dragon
Incomplete book of dragons
The Explorer
Wild Animals of the South
Good Night Stories Rebel Girls
War Game
Kensuke's Kingdom
The Lost Book of Adventure
Survivors
Who Let the Gods Out
Mythical Beasts and Magical Monsters
George's Secret Key to the Universe
Hidden Figures
Secrets of the Sun King
Tutankhamun
Egyptology
Short!
Atlas of Adventures Wonders of the World
The Girl who stole an Elephant
Alex Rider Stormbreaker
Alex Rider The Gadgets
Floodland
The Lost Book of Adventure
Letters from the Lighthouse
High Flight Poems from WW2
Polar Bear Explorers Club
Macbeth
Hamlet
