Writing

The truth is that writing is hard. What’s more, teaching it is even harder! Every teacher knows that supporting a child to master what we might call basic sentence construction takes years.

Writing Vision                                                                                                                                

‘Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.’- JK Rowling

At Ocker Hill Infants we aim for children to become coherent, confident and purposeful writers, who are able to write clearly for a range of purposes, effects and for pleasure. Through high quality texts and engaging experiences, children will develop a rich vocabulary and an understanding of how to compose writing in different genres; whilst building cultural capital and understanding of the diverse world around them.

Intent:

• We have high expectations for all our children, igniting their love of reading and writing in Early Years.
• Our curriculum underpinned by a range of rich texts and nurtures a love of reading, writing and language.
• We teach children the craft of writing, in order to enable them to confidently apply their writing skills across the curriculum.
• The development of talk and the fundamental tool of the spoken language is fed into the children’s writing journey.
• Rooted in effective synthetic phonics, children are guided to deploy basic spelling skills and the formation of letters with increasing accuracy.
• In Key Stage 1 pupils build upon existing knowledge in a progressive manner, developing a full range of punctuation and fluency of handwriting.
• Presentation is highly valued and children learn to take pride in their work.
• Towards the end of Year 2 we intend to create independent writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, focussing on the essential skills of spelling, punctuation of grammar.

Implementation:

            How curriculum is taught

• An Alan Peat approach to narrative and non-fiction runs throughout our children’s writing journey. They build up the access language of a structural model over time, before applying this to writing with increasing independence.
• In EYFS children have a wide range of opportunities to mark make and develop their gross and fine motor skills needed to develop pencil grip and their physical stamina for writing.
• Through adaptive teaching all children access high quality writing opportunities, with SEND pupils supported by scaffolded activities or additional adult support where possible.
• Through the use of our learning characters children are taught to resilient and peer assess as a means to improve their writing, using strategies such as gallery critique and ABC.
• Learning vocabulary is key to learning and progress across the whole curriculum since it allows pupils to access a wider range of words when writing and for them to understand and comprehend texts efficiently. Chatterbox sessions are used in EYFS to develop children’s language skills.
• SPaG skills are taught explicitly in Key Stage 1 and Alan Peat sentence types.
• Alongside phonics the spelling of Common Exception Words are taught specifically to each year group. We believe spelling enables our children to become more effective writers.
• Children take weekly spellings home in Key Stage 1.
• Daily high quality Twinkl phonics whole class lesson- children working significantly below have additional booster groups.
• Daily handwriting lessons using Twinkl phonics scheme, consistent with phonics letter mnemonics. Children are taught ways to strengthen their fine motor skills, develop and use a correct grip and practise the formation of letters taught.
• Handwriting interventions are used across the school where children take pride in developing their letter formation skills in smaller groups.

What does Writing look like at Ocker Hill Infant and Nursery?

Writing and the EYFS

Writing, along with reading, makes up literacy, one of the four specific areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The Early Learning Goals for writing come from both literacy and physical development. They are:

Children at the expected level of development will:

• Write recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed;
• Spell words by identifying sounds in them and representing the sounds with a letter or letters;
• Write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.

Best practice and activity ideas

Gross motor skills

Learning to write is closely linked to a child's physical development. Before children can control the muscles in their hands, they need to develop their gross motor skills (those that need large or whole body movements). For babies this means the freedom and space to kick, roll and crawl. And for older children this also means the chance to run, climb, balance, throw, push, pull and swing their arms.

Gross motor skills activity ideas:

• use ribbon sticks to make large circular and zig zag movements in the air
• swing and hang from climbing frames
• lift and move heavy objects
• paint with large rollers and brushes on a vertical surface (like a wall or easel)
• marching to music
• anything that encourages children to stretch their arms above their heads.

Fine motor skills

As soon as a baby starts to show that they're beginning to control their movements, you can encourage fine motor skills (precise, small muscle movements). Hand eye coordination is a key part of this so provide babies with a range of interesting objects to grasp, squeeze, pat and poke. By handling objects, children are strengthening their hands and fingers, so that they can grip a pencil.

Fine motor skills and hand strength activity ideas:

• use small droppers to drop water on to a target
• use a spray bottle to fire water on to a target
• screw up small pieces of paper
• open and close zip loc bags using index finger and thumb
• squeeze sponges to move water from one container to another
• pop bubble wrap
• push pipe cleaners through the holes of a colander
• prod, poke, squeeze and roll play dough or push it through a garlic press
• pick up small objects and put them in compartments or a cupcake tray
• twist and open containers with lids.

Mark making

Before children are able to form letters, they need to learn how to make marks. These marks can be with their finger in yoghurt on their high chair tray or pictures they've drawn or painted. They're working out how writing works, how to hold their pencil, what pressure to put on the paper and how to control the marks they make.

It's important to have mark making and writing resources available for children to use in every area of the early years provision in your setting - including outside. Children need space to explore making marks and boys in particular may enjoy making large scale marks on the floor where they can stretch out. You could use the backs of rolls of wallpaper for this or use chalk or water on the floor outside.

Writing and language

When babies first start to scribble, it's simply a physical activity. But through interactions with adults, they'll learn that these marks have meaning and can convey thoughts and feelings. It's helpful to talk to children about what they've produced as it gives them confidence to experiment more with mark making and extends their understanding of how writing works.

Writing in Key Stage One (Years 1 and 2)

At KS1 the expectations regarding writing, and specifically sentence construction and demarcation, have been stripped back somewhat in recent years. It is important to remind ourselves that some of the aspects of writing that were expected to be taught pre-NC 2014, have been shunted into the KS2 Programme of Study (PoS). For example, according to the NC, ‘inverted commas to punctuate speech’ does not need to be introduced until Y3. Adverbs of time and place used to sit squarely in the Year 2 PoS, but again, this has been shifted to Year 3.

In regards to the WHY question, the  response is simple. Any stripping back of the content of the KS1 writing curriculum is a good thing due to the fact that what is left within the PoS is hard! Essentially, we are left with what some might unwittingly call ‘the basics’. That is, the skill of recognising and writing simple and multi-clause sentences, using the correct end punctuation and correct capitalisation. Year 2 takes this a little further by encouraging sentence embellishment: specifically, the addition of detail for the reading through the inclusion of adjectives and noun phrases. Fundamentally, when looked at coldly, there is now scope within the KS1 PoS to focus on the big stuff. Quite right too. As stated in the opening line, writing is hard, and nothing is harder than supporting young writers to master the concept to transforming their thoughts into well-shaped sentences.

The key word in the last sentence is ‘master’. By this, I mean that they can write a sentence that has a capital letter at the start; that has the appropriate end punctuation; and that may, or may not, be extended by the use of a limited range of subordinating or coordinating conjunctions about any topic (within reason) in any context, be it an English lesson or history lesson or geography lesson and so on. Sounds simple, but the reality is that every teacher knows how hard this is to achieve.

No doubt, the key to success in this pursuit is practice, and lots of it.

Put simply, practice is the act of doing something that you can already do, thus allowing that skill to become automatic or second-nature. This is about asking children to do something that they can already appear to be able to do. ‘Where are the errors? Where is the challenge? Where is the ambition?’ we might be asked by a well-intentioned observer.

Time to practise this vital skill should not just be left to tasks undertaken within the wider curriculum – core practice time should also take place within the English lessons. Time to practise within the time allocated to English lessons falls within what was once called ‘phase 1 teaching’

The simple truth is that moving on too soon from this focus is futile. Until the children have really mastered sentence construction and demarcation at a basic level, it will just keep on coming back to bite.

Writing Composition in Year 1 (age 5–6)

Writing Composition in Year 2 (age 6–7)

Supporting your child/children at home with Writing.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/english/primary-writing/