What does Writing look like at Hilderthorpe?
At Hilderthorpe Primary School, we follow the national curriculum for writing, using the Jane Considine scheme of work.
Subject Leader
The subject leader for RWI Phonics is Miss Bailey.
The subject leader for writing is Mrs Hammond-Reid.
I like writing stories in class because it makes me think hard.
Intent Statement
At Hilderthorpe Primary School, we believe that literacy and oracy should be at the heart of our curriculum. Our aim is to expose children to a wide and varied range of literature which provides challenge in terms of vocabulary and content. Children will be taught to recognise the power of the pen and its ability to share information and create new and wonderful imaginary worlds. We want children to leave Hilderthorpe as confident communicators in writing.
Key Information
As part of the RWI phonics programme, the children are taught to collaborate their writing along with the teaching of sounds and words. The children learn to form letters (grapheme) alongside the sound (phoneme) they are learning. They use a rhyme to remind them how the sound is formed.
Once the children begin to read simple CVC words, such as ‘cat,’ they learn to spell. The children use Fred Fingers for Spelling sounding out each letter on their fingers and writing it down in the spoken order. This along with their letter formation work (handwriting) and providing lots of opportunities for writing in all learning areas using bespoke planning and learning intentions, this provides the children with the core fundamentals of writing.
Children are engaged in writing for real life purposes and across the curriculum. Children progress from RWI to the Write Stuff in Year 2. The Write Stuff is a challenging writing programme, that establishes high expectations for all writers as they journey as a writer across the whole school.
Teaching for Greater Depth
Children who are greater depth will be able to work independently and should be able to use differing sentence structure, punctuation and vocabulary confidently appropriate for their age and stage, if not beyond. They can apply these skills across a range of genres and topics and should be able to write a for a range of audiences and purposes. They should be able to vary and use these skills to interest the reader and be able to articulate their choices of vocabulary and punctuation.
These children should be able to use these skills consistently across the curriculum. Children working at greater depth, are able to return to genres of writing not taught for a period of time and still feel confident that they can include the relevant features of the text. Children will be able to identify the features of the given genre and be able to explain them to someone else.
Links to Real Life
The audience and purpose of a text is always explored and real life examples are shared and analysed enabling children to make links between their own work and real life examples. For example, children have written letters to members of the Royal Family and to astronauts to name but a few…. We have even received replies!
Variation
Children are scaffolded and supported in their learning in every step of their writing journey. Children analyse texts and have texts modelled to them so that they know exactly what they need to do to achieve the task. Children can access additional resources and adult support to ensure that they are on track to make progress through the primary curriculum which is tailored to their individualised needs and areas of development.