Bolsover Church of England Junior School
Writing at Bolsover
“It is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these two dimensions (transcription and composition). In addition, pupils should be taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing.” (DfE 2013)
Writing - To become competent in transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing: planning, revising and evaluating writing).
Following the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum, at Bolsover Church of England Junior School, we endeavour to stimulate a life–long love of writing. We provide our pupils with the knowledge and skills in order for them to become effective communicators in the world beyond Bolsover.
"Reading and writing float on a sea of talk..." - James Britton
It is our intention to ensure that reading and writing are interconnected so that children can make purposeful links across their learning. It is for this reason that we place a significant focus on the study of literature from across the ages and genres. Our writing is underpinned by the standards of reading in our school, which supports vocabulary and the understanding of conventions and structures of a range of text genres. Vocabulary rich texts are chosen to both stimulate and challenge the children, leading to high-quality writing outcomes.
Our writing curriculum also builds on the development of accuracy in spelling and developing a progressive understanding of grammar and punctuation, which enables our pupils to clearly, accurately and coherently explain and write down their understanding and ideas.
Our pupils are given the opportunity to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes to write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences. They develop this knowledge around three key aspects:
- Authorial intent (purpose)
- Precise and ambitious use of vocabulary
- Tone
We want children to write clearly, accurately and coherently and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time at our school. Furthermore, we recognise that handwriting is part of our daily lives; it is on show to others and may be used to make judgements about us. Therefore, we encourage our pupils to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, joined, handwriting style.
Subject Leaders
The subject leaders for writing in school is Mr Backhouse. They can be contacted on 01246 822324, or via our school email at info@bolsover-jun.derbyshire.sch.uk. Our English nominated governor is Mrs Sarah Tew who can be contacted via the same contacts above.
The National Curriculum Aims
The National Curriculum for writing aims to ensure that all pupils:
- acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
- appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
- use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
- are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.
You can find the full National Curriculum programmes of study for English at Key Stage 2 by clicking here.
Subject Policies, Documents & Guidance
Writing Lessons at Bolsover
At Bolsover Church of England Junior School, our writing lessons are built around our reading curriculum. Our staff plan the writing focus based on events that have happened within the key text that they are reading. We cover a range of genres throughout the year. Our teachers plan lessons to focus on the skills required for each genre which then lead to an extended piece of writing. Once we have written a piece of writing we then look at revising, editing and publishing.
We see writing as a process made up of seven components:
• planning;
• drafting;
• sharing;
• evaluating;
• revising;
• editing; and
• publishing.
Further information about this can be found here on the Education Endowment Fund English Toolkit.
Talk for Writing
At Bolsover Church of England Junior School, we aim to foster a love of storytelling and writing right from the start through exciting and engaging our children in interactive learning.
In school, we follow Pie Corbett's Talk for Writing approach to recognise the importance of discussion and the learning of language to develop our abilities as budding writers. Talk for Writing allows the children to engage in learning language-rich, high-level model texts through using pictures, actions and performances (click here to use our actions at home for your own interactive storytelling) to capture key patterns, structural techniques and challenging vocabulary for our own writing.
Adding to our BBR Crew approach to reading, Talk for Writing enhances the love of English our school possesses and fulfils our ethos in equipping children for their lives beyond Bolsover by creating confident writers who are inspired by their lessons. Through Talk for Writing, our children are given opportunities to immerse themselves in hearing, reading and re-inventing a range of texts and genres including stories, poems and non-fiction texts.
The process encourages children, first of all, to memorise the model text and rehearse it daily throughout the unit. They then imitate the model text and finally innovate and invent their own texts around the chosen style while continually reflecting on their learning. With the addition of exciting literacy games, this forms the basis for all of our writing units (see the process flow chart here).
During the writing process, our children are taught to ‘magpie’ interesting ideas, analyse the features of different text styles, box-up the structure of the texts and develop their learning in to quality pieces of independent writing. The children are all the while supported through shared and guided writing, verbal and written feedback and their internalisation of the model texts.
At the beginning of a unit of work, we set the pupils an unseen or taught writing task (a "cold task") to assess and set individual targets based on each child’s ‘cold task’ to show precisely what the child is already capable of achieving (click here to see the progression of skills in Talk for Writing). These targets form personalised planning through the entire process and, with regular verbal feedback and quality-first teaching throughout, the independent applications show allow pupils to show great progress in the final write (the ‘hot task’).
We believe that Talk for Writing helps provide our pupils with the skills and understanding to achieve highly in English as they move throughout Key Stage 2 and beyond.
Please see the following document for how we approach Talk for Writing at Bolsover here: Talk for Writing at Bolsover
These resources are published on the Talk for Writing website and are free to use. Further resources may be found here: http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/resources/.
The “Hook Your Reader” Toolkit
Innovating on Non-fiction
Inventing Stories
Literature-Spine
Progression Updated 2015
Shared Writing Phrases
Story Reading into Writing
Suspense Toolkit
Subject Overview - What genres and key story structures do we cover across school in writing?
Progression of Skills - What do the progression in skills for writing look like?
Assessment in Writing
A range of assessment techniques and tools are used by the teachers to generate information. Assessment of writing takes place during each writing session. The assessments formed allow class teachers to provide ongoing next steps for the pupils so they can identify how to become a better writer. To support staff with their assessments in writing, we have progression grids which allow them to identify that age at which a child is working. The assessment of writing enables a clear progression to be seen from Year 3 to Year 6 and is broken down further for each year group into working towards, at the expected standard and working at a greater depth (at a higher standard).
Each term, we formally assess pupils’ hot writing tasks. This enables us to identify clear targets for our pupils and allows teachers to adapt teaching sequences as needed. To do this we use the following writing criteria statements to help us identify is pupils are working towards the year group standard, at their year group standard or above.
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Every full term, writing moderation is planned in to our staff training programme to allow time for staff to moderate writing across school and compare the quality of writing to DfE standardised materials. We also take part in local cluster and academy moderation sessions to compare the quality of writing to other schools to check our standards are accurate.
Useful links and websites for English
Reading & Writing
BBC Bitesize - Reading & Writing
BBC Bitesize - Different Writing Genres
Grammar
BBC Bitesize - Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling
Speaking & Listening
BBC Bitesize - Speaking & Listening