Writing at Hangleton
Our Intent:
At Hangleton we believe that the ability to speak with confidence and listen effectively are key life skills. Without these, you are unable to express yourself and moreover will struggle to become a successful writer. It is for this reason that our lessons are underpinned with opportunities to practise and develop our language skills and then feed these rehearsed sentences into our writing. This may be through drama or real life experiences, so that when children come to the writing process; they are equipped and confident at meeting the outcome. Alongside this approach, we include word development so that their vocabulary banks are rich and diverse.
All of our English teaching begins with a quality core text. We want the children to be exposed to excellent examples of writing that engage them and stimulate a love of writing. We use these novels to guide the children and teach them about structure, genre and how to impact your reader through the choices that you make.
To become an expert writer, it is vital that you write in a range of different genres. We want our children to feel confident in the features that define each text type and how to engage their reader in different ways.
Implementation:
- All English planning will focus around a High Quality Core Text to provide inspiration, excitement and maximise engagement in the writing process.
- All written tasks will have a clear purpose and audience, which will be shared with the children.
- All planning incorporates opportunities for children to write in a variety of genres.
- Children will be provided with opportunities for cross curricular writing tasks.
- Children will regularly explore poetry, language, drama and discussion around all writing genres.
- All planning needs to meet every child’s needs; through scaffolded activities and careful, targeted questioning.
- All planning is informed in reference to end of year ARE (Age Related Expectation) objectives.
- English lessons are engaging and help to develop a passion for writing as a means to communicate.
- Grammar, spelling and punctuation will be taught daily; in context of texts and with an explicit focus on formal terms.
- ¨ Phonics is taught discretely, rigorously and differentiated from Reception and throughout KS1, and reinforced through reading and writing teaching.
Ways to Support your child at home
- · Practising spellings: practise writing in ketchup, steamy windows, chalk, different mediums (paint, pasta, lentils,) looking for the ’tricky bit’ in the word and writing in a different colour, finding spellings in books you are reading, signs, menus and the world around you.
- · Encouraging your child to write for the love of writing: why not try diary writing, sports/match write ups, travel blogs, letters to members of family, newspaper reports, notes, postcards.
- · Oracy: interviewing, discussing opinions on books or events, word play-rhymes, raps, songs, rehearsing sentences using different grammar focuses (adjectives, conjunctions, fronted adverbials,) improving sentences by adding words into a simple sentence, learning poetry by heart.
- · Word Wonder: be a detective and look for interesting words in the books you read, films you watch and world around you. If you bump into an interesting word, talk about it, write it down, find out it’s meaning, it’s root, practise it in a sentence.
- · Handwriting: fine motor strength is key to confident and clear handwriting. To build up these muscles you can squeeze a squishy ball, work with playdough or clay, pick up small objects with tweezers, cut up paper with scissors. If you are practising your letters, try using paint, clay
We now teach grammar terms that may not have been used during your own educational experience.
Here are a few to help you support your child at home.
