Writing

At Temple Learning Academy, the strands of English (reading, writing and oracy) have been weaved together carefully to form our rich, ambitious and inspiring curriculum, which challenges our children appropriately at every point in their journey.

Reception children access a range of writing opportunities in both indoor and outdoor areas of provision. From Year 1, alongside daily sentence work, children are exposed to a range of different genres to allow them to gain the knowledge and skills to progress into Year 2, when they begin composing their own genres.

Our writing process begins with a ‘Taster’ which is intended to excite children about their writing, allowing them to record their initial, creative responses. They then move on to gain the knowledge and skills needed to support them with their own compositions, which include the features of the focus genre as well as the command of tone, purpose and audience. Children are actively engaged in this process, making thoughtful edits and improvements to their writing and taking great pride in their final, published pieces. 

Handwriting is taught regularly. Initially, children develop their fine motor control and pencil grip and learn to form letters using Read Write Inc Phonics. Firstly, individual letters are taught without entry strokes. From Year 3, children are taught to join their writing with fluency, legibly and with increasing speed. From Year 5, children begin to write in pen. SEND children are supported appropriately at their individual stages.

Spelling is taught discretely following the guidance of the National Curriculum. Phonetical knowledge is explicitly referred to, building on the foundation of early writing established in EYFS and Year 1 with our Read Write Inc Phonics scheme. Using this approach, staff teach children to understand the correspondence between phonemes and graphemes in spoken and written words and break down their morphology, rather than relying on memorisation.

In our Writing lessons, you will see:

• Robust, sequenced curriculum planning which follows our Primary Stages of Writing document
• Sequences of learning which begin with a guided Taster writes and creative responses, building towards an independent piece
• High-quality texts used as model examples
• High-quality talk modelled consistently by staff and embedded in children’s approach to their writing
• Learning walls used effectively to display the process of learning across each unit
• Children writing consciously for a range of purposes which excite and motivate them
• SEND children supported and scaffolded to access opportunities for independent writing
• Spelling taught discretely
• Handwriting taught discretely and regularly, appropriate to the age and stage of children
• High standards of presentation and prompt, effective challenge when these are not met
• Children proof-reading and editing for impact with teachers, with peers and independently