English

Writing At Marlborough Junior School

• To develop pupils in becoming efficient and effective writers who are able to write appropriately for a variety of audiences
• To develop pupils in acquiring the knowledge and skills to communicate effectively within a range of contexts
• To ensure all pupils can use the conventions of written language and grammar
• To ensure that all pupils experience a range of purposes and forms of writing
• To ensure all pupils follow the Letter Join handwriting scheme to develop  a fluent cursive handwriting style
• To ensure all pupils have opportunities to plan, edit, draft and present their work
• To develop pupils to become aware of and appreciate the writer's craft
• To develop pupils love of writing

Curriculum Coverage

All pupils should be writing daily in some form across the curriculum using the skills and knowledge acquired in literacy lessons. Class teachers will follow the curriculum map to ensure that children are exposed to all genres and writing forms.

Modelled and Shared Writing

Shared writing is a whole class activity where the teacher models the writing of the text. In shared writing, the pupils will contribute to the text by suggesting words or sentences to be used. The teacher demonstrates how to write and explains decisions. S/he 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 organization of the text. A particular aspect of word or sentence level work provides an additional focus depending on the objectives and targets begin worked on at that time.

Presentation

All pupils will begin by writing in pencil. Year 6 are expected to start off writing in pen. Pupils who can neatly present their work by following the presentation guidelines will be able to apply for a pen license. Any scaffolding sheets used to support SEN and EAL pupils should be trimmed and stuck in neatly.

Differentiation

To ensure all of our pupils are making the most progress they can within a lesson the work must be clearly differentiated using AFL via a variety of methods e.g. resources, adult support and level of thinking skills required. Class teachers will be required to fill in a differentiation grid at the beginning of each unit .Differentiation must not be based on outcome alone but based on the thinking skills the activity requires. Differentiated questioning and high expectations during the main teaching can be used to stretch the more able pupils and develop other pupils.

Handwriting Aims

• To produce clear, concise, legible handwriting
• To provide equal opportunities for all pupils to achieve success in handwriting
• To present work to a variety of audiences neatly
• To develop accuracy and fluency
• To help children recognize that handwriting is a form of communication and as such should be considered important in order for it to be effective
• To display neatly presented work around the school and in classrooms as a model of excellence for others to aspire to
• To encourage pupils to take pride in their work

 

Development of learning and teaching handwriting

Teachers need to have high expectations, asking pupils to rewrite work if not written neatly. Using Letter Join children should be taught , how to form cursive letters correctly using correct joins.   Handwriting should be taught discreetly twice a week in lessons. All children will write in pencil ; once children have presented their work neatly in all of their books they may see the English Lead (Deputy Head teacher in his/her absence) to apply for a pen license. Children will then receive a certificate congratulating them on receiving their pen license and they may use a pen in their topic and literacy books.

Talk for Writing Aims

Talk for writing allows developing writers at Marlborough Junior School to explore the creative and thinking processes in writing through talk. The talk allows the children to begin to think and talk like a writer.

The talk for writing (story telling approach) includes:

• Learning and repeating oral stories
• Extending the oral stories into writing
• Creating new stories orally

The story telling approach should include imitation (repeating the stories), innovation (changing and developing the stories and finally invention (creating a new story).

Talk for writing will expose all pupils to oral storytelling. Each year group will begin a new genre with a model text that has the structural , language , technical and grammatical features associated with the given genre.  These model texts will give the children a starting point to refer to throughout the genre. The benefits of the talk for writing approach are that the pupils will build a bank of good vocabulary and narrative patterning. It will also help build confidence so that children can build their own creative stories. The talk for writing approach gives opportunities for class teaches to  build in role play/drama and to build in different word games (tell me about, building a picture).

All children begin each genre with a cold write  writing a nonfiction or fiction text without any help  this is assessed through the Key Performance Indicators for the said year group.

Imitation:

Children use a model text and deconstruct the text to learn what makes it a biography or an adventure story. They box up and summarize the text again focusing on structural , grammatical , technical and language features.To enable the children to become fluent in the features we text map the text learning and internalizing its features.

Innovation

Through modeled and guided writing the children alter the story ; changing characters ,setting or events. Using Alan Peat sentence types the children are taught how to construct a character description or describe a setting. The focuses is on using standard English and punctuation correctly. This phase might involve some drama for children to develop their ideas or lots of  word play to build vocabulary and grammatical vocabulary . Using the model text as a base the children are able to magpie ideas to help them.

Invention

This phase is where the children apply all the previously taught skills in the genre and create their own story. Some will use the model text as a starting point others will create a new story from scratch.The writing of their finally story is an independent task and is assessed through a hot write and the Key Performance Indicators for the said year group.

There should be noticeable progress between the cold and hot writes.

Speech and Language Aims:

• To have all pupils develop into confident communicators
• To prepare pupils to communicate with a variety of audiences
• To promote standard English

Speech and language will be included in daily literacy lessons. Speech and language is an effective way to differentiate and challenge our more able pupils. Speech and language can be used in drama activities, partner talk, and class discussions.