Bentley High Street Primary school ambitious intent in writing is to ensure that all children are able communicate confidently in writing. The curriculum enables novice learners to embed skills and knowledge in reading, writing and spoken langugae so that they can transition to experts. The EYFS builds this knowledge by supporting children to develop the transcriptional skills needed for Year 1.
The curriculum prioritises fluency so pupil's working is freed for more complex application. Across the curriculum, teachers are supported to ensure that lesson component knowledge meets the needs of pupils through careful assessment. Through a defined writing process, child build disciplinary knowledge by being supported to critique work and to think like a writer.
The school has developed a word and sentence level curriculum that has key focuses and expectation across each term. This supports children in becoming accurate writers.
All children, including those that are disadvantaged should be given tools to enable and empower them to demonstrate high standards of language and literacy for a variety of purposes and in a range of contexts. This includes developing a love of literature and understanding the concepts of the craft of writing and the impact effective composition can have on a reader. Therefore, within the teaching of writing, our intention is that children develop an awareness of ‘writer talk’ through the exploration and immersion into a variety of diverse authors and writing for a range of purposes. Through our curriuclum children are taught the structural and technical knowledge fostered alongside developing a love for writing as a lifelong means for communication and expressing oneself.
In all year groups, we teach writing either through high-quality texts or by establishing real purpose for writing linked to curriuclum topics or stimulating world events. This is because we intend for children to be inspired by writing by ensuring purpose is authentic. Over their time at the school, children will write a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, including recounts, news reports, explanation texts, poems, plays and stories of all kinds. We use drama, role-play, storytelling and discussion to engage the imagination, before moving on to vocabulary exploration, sentence craft and creative writing.
Throughout the Early Years and Key Stage 1 children are taught the key principles of writing in order to lay a solid foundation for developing their skills later on. An emphasis is placed on developing clear handwriting with ‘finger spaces’ between in each word. Children are taught to apply their knowledge of phonics to help them spell accurately, and to structure their work, whether it be fiction writing or a set of instructions. Our curriculum teaches the children to add variation and description to their work by developing their vocabulary, including the use of interesting adjectives and adverbs and developing sentence structure using conjunctions and sentence openers. By the end of Key Stage 1 children have been taught the fundamentals of punctuation and grammar. This structural and technical knowledge is fostered alongside developing a love for writing as a lifelong means for communication and expressing oneself.
Bentley High Street Primary School uses the MSL Handwriting Rescue Scheme. The key purpose of this scheme is to provide consistent, improved, cursive handwriting. The scheme intends to provide children with confidence so that communicating in pen on paper becomes pleasurable. By establishing fluid cursive handwriting and automaticity, children will be able to develop an individual style.