Writing at New Town

Writing is a vitally important life skill for all children to be successful both in school and in their future professional and personal lives. High quality Early Years provision and a consistent approach to teaching early writing creates strong foundations within our English curriculum. We teach writing using Literacy Tree which is a complete, thematic approach that places children’s literature at its core. Children are immersed in a literary world through the use of high-quality texts, therefore creating strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for writing. Through this approach, children become critical readers and acquire an authorial style as they encounter a wide range of significant authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Literacy tree provides complete coverage of all National Curriculum expectations for writing composition, reading comprehension, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. All plans lead to purposeful application within a wide variety of writing opportunities. We aim for children’s writing opportunities to be meaningful and to feel authentic, ensuring that the audience and purpose is clear. Our aim is that children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform or instruct. Writing in role using a range of genres is key to our approach. At our school, the Literacy Tree texts are mapped out across each year group to ensure progression and National Curriculum coverage.

Grammar and Punctuation

The teaching of grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are fully embedded in the writing process. Grammar skills are taught in line with the National Curriculum Expectations. Our grammar teaching takes place daily and children are given ample opportunities to apply their new knowledge purposefully through the writing process.

Spelling

We follow the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum and teach spelling in a dedicated daily session. We use the Spelling Ninja approach in school as a basis to allow children time to investigate words within a meaningful context, learn the rules of spellings and provide children with a deeper understanding of vocabulary. As part of this, children receive weekly spellings which they are tested on.