Woodchurch Writing Strategy

At Woodchurch Primary School we recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children enjoy writing and take pride in it. They can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of purposes. We believe in using the power of stories and rich texts to inspire writing.

At Woodchurch we have carefully chosen a breath of high quality texts that engage children. A range of both fiction and non-fiction texts are used throughout each year to ensure progression. We believe that children need to develop a secure knowledge-base within writing, which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the primary curriculum, which enables children to make links with the wider curriculum. Our children enjoy being fully immersed in their learning and are keen to become expert writers.

We believe that a secure basis in writing skills is crucial to a high-quality education and this will give our children the tools they need to be ready for the next stage of their education.

The Writing Sequence - Implementation 

1. Deconstruction 

2. Planning

3. First draft 

4. Evaluate/ revise/reflect

5. Publish 

Deconstruction 

The deconstruction phase is the early learning phase of a particular text type. 

This involves breaking down examples or WAGOLLS of the specific text type that is the focus for a piece of writing and any research required. Here, teachers should scaffold learning to ensure children can identify the key features of a particular text type as well as the skills required to write successfully within this text type. This could include grammatical features, presentational features or language features. Depending on the year group and the children’s knowledge of a particular text type, teachers will encourage pupils to ‘have-a-go’ and have an initial experiment with this text type through a ‘cold task’ first to see what they know.

• Cold tasks are to be completed at the initial part of this stage and written on blue lined paper. The size of lines need to be appropriate for the child i.e. thicker or thin.

What do they need to be successful in their writing?

Planning and Skills based Learning

During the planning phase, children may require scaffolds (it is okay to use these but make sure they are meaningful and necessary!). This is where your skills need to be taught which should be a maximum of 4 lessons to teach the skills required for this text type. Children should draw on their knowledge gained through the prior stage. At this stage of the writing sequence, children devise a plan for a piece of writing (this may be extended writing) for the specific text type they have already deconstructed in the previous phase. Planning accounts for the key features and skills needed for the text type, including the grammatical concepts and vocabulary that could be applied. This phase is important: it should give the basic yet complete outline of a future writing piece. This could be bullet points or a story map, for example, and should outline the key components of particular sections of writing. Children will draw on this when they complete their first draft; this should be seen as a prompt for children to use and impart their knowledge in extended pieces of writing.

First Draft 

Children will write an initial draft, applying the necessary skills they have learned associated with a particular text type. This is a child’s opportunity to demonstrate their writing skills, considering the purpose for writing and their audience. In addition, this is when their knowledge gained through the means of research and connected curriculum based learning should be called upon and utilised in their writing. The planning phase will provide the children with an outline of their writing structure; the draft should be the incorporation of knowledge and writing skills to generate a piece of writing in developed sentences. 

• This stage of the writing sequence is a hot task. This needs to be completed on pink lined paper. Again, the size of the lines needs to be appropriate for individual children. Paper needs to be clearly trimmed to fit neatly in their books. 

Evaluate,Revise, Reflect. and Edit

Evaluation could take on a variety of forms. It is imperative children evaluate their draft as they go, critiquing their writing and considering what editing may need to take place. This type of evaluation needs to happen during the writing process and post-writing, considering if it meets the intended learning goal and key ingredients. This must be purposeful and meaningful; children should be aware that this is an important part of writing that helps make them a better writer. 

Children are provided with the opportunity to correct spellings, identify and rectify grammatical errors, improve vocabulary and punctuation choices and improve sentence structure. Having displayed good examples on the IWB or flipchart, generating phrase banks and identifying trends and correcting misconceptions is going to be incredibly important here. 

In addition, conferencing as a feedback tool will be effective here. Training class TAs to support teachers in the process is essential - we want our TAs to be able to deliver what a teacher could, discussing expectations is paramount.

Self and peer evaluation could take place here. Documenting the success criteria and skills for children to consider could be shown for children to reference.  Where editing does take place, a green pen/ pencil should be used.   

Publish

This stage is not always necessary, however it provides opportunities for children to produce pieces of work that may be used for display or present their writing in a creative or imaginative way. This is also an effective way of demonstrating the writing journey children have undertaken. 

Any published pieces will be written on yellow paper to show consistency across the school when displaying published pieces.

Having ‘cold’, ‘hot’ & ‘published’ pieces will clearly show progression in writing as well as the rest of this writing sequence.

Time scale for the writing sequence

There is no requirement for lessons to be a specific time i.e. an hours traditional lessons. Instead, we will be calling these sessions. For each part of the writing sequence there will be a maximum number of sessions that will be taught for each stage. Through teacher judgement these can change if sessions need to be adapted to suit the needs of the children or a class as the writing sequence is being taught.

Deconstruction - Maximum of 2 sessions

Planning and skills based learning - Maximum of 5 sessions

First Draft, evaluate, edit & revise - Maximum of 4 sessions

Publish - Maximum of 1 session

Total sessions - 12 Sessions

Handwriting

The National Curriculum places emphasis on neat handwriting. It it is still important that writing is legible and accurate. Having good handwriting means that children can focus on other aspects of writing without having to worry too much about what their writing looks like. All our staff model good handwriting at all times, teaching and using the following styles for print and joined handwriting. 

Please see below our handwriting scheme which is Debbie Hepplewhite's method of handwriting.