Our Approach to Teaching Writing

Learning to speak, listen, read, spell and write are the foundations of our curriculum and are modelled and taught systematically and incidentally (making purposeful links to support the long term memory) throughout the school day. 

 

The Write Stuff

At Beech Green, pupils become writers through the delivery of ‘The Write Stuff’.  Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar and techniques of writing.  We support children to make ambitious vocabulary choices and encourage them to write with confidence independently, taking into consideration the impact they have on the reader.

Teaching sequence

In the teaching sequence, there are three different types of lessons; writing lessons, experience lessons and independent writing lessons.  The teaching sequence for each unit may be different depending upon the content, but this is outlined at the start of each unit.  A writing lesson consists of three ‘learning chunks’.  Each learning chunk consists of:

The Three Zones of Writing

There are three zones of writing which are taught during lessons:

Vocabulary (ideas)   -   Grammar (tools)    -   Literary Devices (techniques)

These are taught through the Fantastics, Grammaristics and Boomtastics, which can be seen on the Writing Rainbow below.

 

These are then intentionally introduced across the key stages to ensure children leave us with a wealth of techniques, flair and grammatical understanding to communicate effectively in written format wherever their future takes them.

All images are taken from The Write Stuff materials from https://www.janeconsidine.com/

Below are some examples of writing from different year groups, with annotations to show what is good about each piece, and where it could be improved. You can click on the images to enlarge them. These are not perfect examples - they include mistakes - but they will give you an idea of what our children should be including in their work in each year group.  Please do talk to your child's class teacher if you would like to know what you can do to help them to develop their writing further.

Please see our approach to reading here.