Writing at West Row Academy
At West Row Academy, we teach writing using a variety of strategies to inspire children’s work and to ensure that they build their knowledge and skills relating to writing in a carefully sequenced way. We take many principals from the Talk For Writing philosophy laid out by Pie Corbett and the Write Stuff philosophy laid out by Jane Consodine and combine these techniques with drama and text-interrogation techniques, as well as spending time unpicking the technical features of the text type and investigation language and structure. With all these tools and techniques at their disposal, children are able to use high-level, quality literacy texts to inspire high quality writing.
Children are encouraged to edit their work during ‘purple pen time’ and redrafting, using a range of tools to support their in their work. We use a range of peer, teacher and self-marking where children use structured success criteria to assess their work.
Assessment is both formative and summative, with children being given a combination of written and verbal feedback to inform their improvements and next steps. Teachers will assess children’s writing against the objectives of the National Curriculum and use these to inform their planning for each written topic.
Spelling and Grammar:
Spelling is taught discreetly throughout the whole school. Please see long term plans for details of which specific spelling patterns and rules are taught in each class and phase.
Children also take part in spelling challenges, whereby they learn specific patterns, rules or groups of words. Children can also practice their spelling using the online tool, Spelling Shed, which helps to lock spelling rules and patterns into children’s long term memories. Each week children are given a spelling list of words to learn and are tested on these words each week.
We teach whole class grammar in line with the national curriculum and EMAT curriculum from Year 1. Please see long term plans for exact coverage of each phase.
Grammar is taught discreetly once a week and is revisited during starters, plenaries and when appropriate text types are being taught where the grammar skill is well suited to it. English lessons will have a grammar focus when teaching writing skills, particularly when looking at advanced punctuation, which impacts on the meaning of sentences. Children in Year 6 will revise concepts from all previous year groups as well as learning new grammar and punctuation as specified in the national curriculum. Children will have a termly Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation test, which will allow teachers to focus their teaching sequences on the needs of each specific class.
Handwriting:
Please click below to view our handwriting policy.