At Distington Community School, we believe that all pupils should be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. We want pupils to acquire a wide vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.

We want them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a good, joined, handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school.

We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process.

We understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both grammar, spelling and composition skills, and so we want to encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school.

Spelling

Spelling is taught using the Read, Write, Inc spelling programme. Children access this programme from Y2 upwards. Read Write Inc. teaches spelling cumulatively and systematically with deliberate, focused practice. It builds upon the teaching strategies and spelling activities from Read Write Inc. Phonics taught in Year 1 and Reception.  It includes all the spelling requirements of the English National Curriculum Years 2 to 6, and also revises spelling taught in Year 1. IT also includes relevant Dictation exercises linked to taught spellings per unit. Children are given weekly spellings to learn each week to support with this learning. Spelling errors are also identified through marking in Literacy books/ RWI books and practice time allowed to enable children to address their errors and learn the correct spelling.

Handwriting

At Distington Community School, we use LetterJoin with the following progressive objectives:

EYFS: Develop writing skills with pre-cursive patterns and cursive letters. This includes letter formation, capitalisation and punctuation symbols.

KS1: Developing pupils’ skills in legible handwriting. This involves practising good pen control, legibility and accuracy.

KS2: Accomplishing neat handwriting and fluent handwriting. This involves developing fluency, speed and accuracy.

As pupils write with automaticity, they will develop a more personal handwriting style and will learn to write at different paces and pay different attention to neatness.

Each child has received a log in to access this site at home. 

http://www.letterjoin.co.uk/ 

Literacy Tree

At Distington Community School, we follow The Literary Curriculum (Literacy Tree) planning tool where we have mapped the coverage of the entire English Programme of Study for KS1 and KS2 for Writing and Reading Comprehension, as well as meeting the needs of the statutory 2021 Early Years Framework. In many cases objectives are covered more than once and children have opportunities to apply these several times over the course of a year, as well as to consolidate prior knowledge from previous years. This approach supports children to think deeply and develop skills with depth.

Where needed, planning sequences are adapted, personalised and differentiated.

Writing is taught explicitly for five lessons a week but is also taught discreetly across the Curriculum.

We place books at the core of our writing curriculum, allowing teachers to use the text as the context for the requirements of the national curriculum. ‘Teach Through a Text’ pedagogy is the backbone of each sequence.

 The national curriculum states that:

‘‘This guidance is not intended to constrain or restrict teachers’ creativity, simply to provide the

structure on which they can construct exciting lessons.’

This would suggest that a context for learning is vital – and this is where our chosen approach can support teachers with ensuring that objectives for reading and writing, including those for grammar can have purpose.

We will always aim for our writing opportunities to be meaningful and to feel authentic. Whether these are short or long and that the audience is clear.

Books offer this opportunity: our aim is that children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform or instruct and that where possible, this can be embedded within text or linked to a curriculum area. Writing in role using a range of genres is key to our approach and we would always model the tone and level of formality.

Writing is celebrated around school on display and incentives are promoted e.g. A Writer’s Certificate is awarded half termly with a special assembly where writing is read aloud to the whole school.

Take a look at some snap-shot samples of writing from across each year group...

Author Visits at DCS ...

Helen Haraldsen ('The Writer in Wellies')

Helen Haraldsen, local children's author, also known as the 'The Writer in Wellies' conducted a workshops across school.

During Helen's visit to our school, we learnt all about the behind-the-scenes work involved in taking a story from first draft to a published book.  We discovered all the stages a story goes through, in order to be 'publication ready'. We even got an opportunity to edit and revise some pages out of Helen's current book that she is writing.

Seeing a real person speak openly about the ups and downs of their writing career allowed us to raise our aspirations and realise that achieving goals is possible to anyone willing to put in the work, wherever they're from and whatever their strengths and weaknesses are. 

Helen emphasised the importance of self-motivation, discipline and perseverance: traits that help us succeed in our education and lives.

Andy Tooze ('The Poet from the Peaks')

Andy delivered an exciting, whole school poetry experience.

His sessions were dynamic and interactive, involving speaking, listening, reading, writing and drama. He read poems from his books, answered our questions about stimulus, form and content. Andy gave us a variety of simple, helpful hints to enable us to compose our own poems using some poetic devices such as repetition, onomatopoeia, rhyming words...

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