Dore Primary School

Writing

Writing composition

At Dore Primary School, all English writing lessons are taught using ‘The Teaching Sequence for Writing’. By following this sequence, children are fully aware of the purpose of their writing and become experts in the subject matter and text-type for which they are writing. The teaching sequence comprises six steps (immerse, analyse, skills, plan, write and review) which lead to quality outcomes in writing. Examples of what this looks like in practice are set out in our composition policy (attached below).

Grammar

Secure knowledge of grammar allows children to express themselves clearly and creatively through their writing. At Dore Primary School, grammar is not taught in isolation but as part of our writing sequence. Children will be taught to identify grammatical features of a good example of the type of text they are preparing to write. They will then practise new grammatical skills after specific instructions and modelling. Finally, they will have the opportunity to use these techniques in their writing. The exact skills that children are taught can be found in our grammar progression policy (attached below).

Handwriting

In all year groups up to and including Year 4, explicit handwriting lessons will enable pupils to focus on the key skills they need to secure. Teaching handwriting in isolation will ensure a pupil’s working memory is not overloaded by other aspects of writing (spelling, punctuation, grammar and composition).  In Years 5 to 6, children will apply their handwriting skills in all writing. By the end of Year 6, children will be able to write fluently and legibly with a clear and consistent personal style that they can maintain even when writing at length and at speed.

Spelling

The teaching of phonics starts in Reception and follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression. This ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.  As a result, children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Dore Primary School, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. There is a strong focus on language development for our children as speaking and listening are
crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. 

Once children have learnt all the ways to make sounds (GPCs: grapheme-phoneme correspondence)  in phonics sessions, they should be able to read most words.  Many words follow these patterns but others are exception words, also called tricky words, that need to be learnt and remembered.  

Whilst children are securing knowledge of the phonic phases (Reception and KS1), weekly review lessons will be used to identify gaps that will be addressed through ‘Just in time interventions’ and ‘keep-up’ support sessions. In the second half of Year 2, and in all year groups in KS2, the teaching of spelling follows the Spelling Shed scheme:
 New spelling lists are introduced in school each week, emphasising the relationships between words and helping pupils to explore morphology (how words are formed) and etymology (the origin and history of words) to support their comprehension and
spelling.
 Practise at home - lists of words are sent home every week and the current list is always available on the Spelling Shed website where a number of games and activities are available. 
 Weekly assessments allow children to practise and review each spelling pattern or set of tricky words. These will also be used to review previously taught spellings.
 End of term assessment - used to identify gaps that will be addressed via ‘Just in time interventions’ and ‘keep-up’ support sessions.
Spelling will also be taught as part of Dore’s teaching sequence for writing. This ensures children understand and can spell the key vocabulary for the text they are writing. This means, previously learnt sounds, words and morphological approaches can be applied in context.

Writing Non-negotiables

The writing non-negotiables set out key skills which we expect children to use in all pieces of writing. This includes writing across the curriculum as well as in English lessons. They refer to learning which is taught and should be secure from the previous year group(s), for example we expect that pupils in Year 2 consistently use full stops at the end of sentences. The writing non-negotiables are below.