Writing

The teaching of writing at Lapage

We want all of our children at Lapage to become life-long, enthusiastic and creative writers through first being avid readers. Our curriculum focuses upon an embedded culture of rich oral language exploration - through which children engage with immersive texts and experiences to inspire their writing.

 

In EYFS, teaching focuses heavily on creating a language-rich environment in order to develop speaking and listening skills, listening to and responding to a range of stories and non-fiction texts and starting to make the links between phonics and writing for a purpose.

At Lapage, from Year 1 (where elements of the FANTASTICS begin to be introduced) through to Year 6, we use ‘The Write Stuff’ Program by Jane Considine. Our literacy curriculum aims to provide children with the experiences, knowledge and skills so that they develop into confident writers able to write across a range of genres or text types and for a range of audiences and purposes.

The Write Stuff programme by Jane Considine is a system that sharpens the teaching and learning of writing within the classroom. It is a clear and systemic approach to the teaching of writing, providing a step-by-step framework to convert struggling writers into successful writers. The Write Stuff involves a method called ‘sentence stacking’, which refers to sentences that are stacked together chronologically and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing. 

The Write Stuff uses three essential components to support children in becoming great writers - The three zones of writing.

IDEAS –  The FANTASTICs uses a child friendly acronym to represent the nine idea lenses through which children can craft their ideas.

TOOLS – The GRAMMARISTICS. The grammar rules of our language system and an accessible way to target weaknesses in pupils grammatical and linguistic structures.

TECHNIQUES – The BOOMTASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual.

These are also captured within ‘The Writing Rainbow’

‘Sentence Stacking’ lessons in Years 2-6

‘The Write Stuff’ allows time for ‘Sentence Stacking’ prior to all independent writing. This emphasises the process of selecting vocabulary, considering  sentence structure and developing ‘chunks of sense’. Each individual lesson is broken into three learning chunks and each learning chunk has three sections:

1. Initiate - a stimulus is used to capture the children’s imagination and support with generating vocabulary.

1. Model - the teacher models a sentence, outlining clear linguistic features and techniques.
2. Enable - children write their own sentence(s) following a model shared by the teacher.

Children can also be challenged to ‘Deepen the Moment’ during each ‘Enable’ chunk and this requires them to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and use them in their own writing. 

As they work through these three stages, children develop their authorial craft,  building vocabulary and phrases using a technique called ‘chotting’ (chatting and jotting). Children’s books are divided into two sections: the ‘Thinking Side’, where thoughts and ideas are recorded, and the ‘Writing Side’ where sentences are constructed

 

Elements of the FANTASTICS being introduced in Year 1:

 

‘Sentence Stacking’ in Year 3:

‘Sentence Stacking’ Year 5:

 

Key benefits of The Write Stuff:

• Support for teachers so that they have a deeper and more flexible knowledge of sentence structure.
• Pupils who understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.
• Standards improve because many worked examples are provided over the year that extend understanding through a wide range of genres and non-fiction text types.
• Children have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.
• Pupils know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.
• Children have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.
• Teachers have clear pathways of how to guide pupils in weak areas such as cohesion and paragraphs.
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• At Lapage Primary School & Nursery, we use a handwriting program called Penpals which runs from Nursery through to Year 6.  

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  The program focuses on 5 stages of handwriting:

• 1. Physical preparation for handwriting (EYFS)
• 2. Securing correct letter formation (Key Stage 1)
• 3. Beginning to join (Key Stage 1)
• 4. Securing the joins and practicing speed (Lower Key Stage 2)
• 5. Developing a personal style (Upper Key Stage 2)

All year groups teach a weekly, discreet lesson at the beginning of the week which introduces the new learning. Lessons include whole body and hand warm up movements, on-screen animations to show the correct formations for letters and joins, modelling of handwriting for pupils to assess and opportunities for practicing. Opportunities are taken to to make links between spelling patterns and handwriting joins.

Elsewhere within a week, pupils have the opportunity to further practice formations independently.

In UKS2, when ready, children are able to write in pen.

Children who are ‘Star Presenters’ are celebrated weekly within headteacher assemblies.

For more information about the Penpals program you can view the following video: 

Penpals for Handwriting: An introduction to Penpals

Penpals-Scope-and-Sequence.pdf

For further information about what is covered in each year group, please see the following documents below:
 

- Progression of Skills Skills-and-Knowledge-Progression-in-Writing.pdf

 

- Handwriting Policy Handwriting-Policy-Penpals.pdf