Curriculum Intent

At Heamoor, we aim for all children to be able to write confidently, coherently and creatively.  We encourage and enable children to be motivated and independent writers, who enjoy writing for a range of purposes and audiences.  We want pupils to acquire a wide, ambitious vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.  We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing by developing a fluent and legible cursive handwriting style by the end of KS2. 

Implementation

As a school, we have adopted ‘The Write Stuff’ by Jane Considine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. ‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’, which is where sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, purposeful moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing. This approach makes sure that all of our children are exposed to high quality texts, extracts or video clips that stimulate high quality writing and purposeful speaking and listening opportunities. Our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes and audiences.

‘The Write Stuff’ is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of ‘The Writing Rainbow’. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing through lenses from The Writing Rainbow.

‘The Write Stuff’ reinforces daily grammar opportunities through the use of:

● The FANTASTICs - an acronym that summarise the nine ideas of writing.

● The GRAMMARISTICs - a tool that enables the teacher to drive key grammatical features of a piece of writing.

● The BOOMTASTICs - help children capture different ways of adding literary and poetic devices to writing, adding a vivid visual for their reader.

An individual lesson lasts for an hour and is broken in to three chunks. Each chunk follows the same process:

● Initiate – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence. Here, we gather rich, adventurous vocabulary through a process called ‘chotting’ (chatting and jotting).

● Model – the teacher models a high-quality sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques drawing on the ‘chotting’ in the initiate section.

● Enable – the children write their sentence, following the model. Some children may Deepen the Moment, which is where they add extra detail through a different lens on The Writing Rainbow, without moving the writing on.

Children’s books are presented in such a way that they are able to organise their ideas clearly and easily, allowing them to follow the teacher’s model and be successful. Each writing lesson is laid out on a double page spread: the left-hand side with a clear grid showing the success criteria from The Writing Rainbow and boxes for their ‘chotting’ ideas and the right-hand side ready to write their sentences, displaying a series of effective, cohesive ideas to form a paragraph.

Live feedback will be provided to the children during writing sessions, enabling teachers to clarify and elaborate immediately, therefore ensuring that misconceptions are not embedded. It also gives pupils the opportunity to act upon the feedback given straight away.

At the end of each chunk, a child’s sentence is chosen to be added to the sentence stacking wall in the classroom. This builds through the unit and, by the end of a unit, a complete and cohesive piece of writing is displayed in every classroom. In addition to this, each sentence will clearly show which child contributed the sentence so they feel their writing is valued and have a sense of pride.