Arden

Subject Lead: Mrs Dunn

OUR INTENT

Our writing curriculum is designed to empower children with the essential skills they need to have a voice in the world. We know that fluency in literacy is crucial to success, to embracing a high-quality education, and to providing children with the tools they need to fully participate in society.

Our focus is to empower children with the ability to comprehend the social aspects of writing. This understanding helps them use different writing styles appropriately, tailoring their writing to its purpose and audience. We aim to foster a progressive comprehension of grammar, the role of punctuation in enhancing clarity, and the application of spelling rules. Handwriting is equally important, and we work towards ensuring all students develop a joined, legible and increasingly efficient style.

At Arden, the teaching of writing within the English curriculum has been carefully considered to enable our pupils to become confident and creative writers. Objectives for each year group are progressively mapped out to ensure children are given the acquired skills and knowledge achieve in KS3 and beyond.

Our aim is to provide inclusive and aspirational environments and learning experiences where pupils thrive, building the cultural capital they need to make aspirational choices about their own futures and overcoming any barriers. Through our writing curriculum, children are taught the knowledge, understanding, and skills they need to fully unlock their individual potential.

Research underscores the pivotal role of writing in a child's educational journey. Writing is not merely a subject, but a fundamental life skill that transcends classrooms and textbooks. It is a vehicle through which children can articulate their thoughts, express their creativity, and communicate effectively with others.

IMPLEMENTATION

Early Years

Children begin their writing journey in the Early Years Foundation Stage, where they take part in a range of high quality activities relating to speaking, listening and developing language. Creative play is fostered through role play areas and tasks are designed so that children are exposed to high quality talk. The foundations for writing readiness are fostered through activities designed to strengthen their gross and fine motor skills, and children engage in programmes that employ neurological and physiological movements to create marks.

Our Early Years provision is meticulously designed to inspire children to learn to write through play. Activities are carefully designed to encourage mark making, writing, speaking and listening, and areas such as the outdoor 'Literacy Shed' inspire children to write regularly. Staff in the Early Years have undergone extensive training and CPD to facilitate high quality interactions, which are the bedrock of communication and language.

Children in Reception engage with our Ready Steady Write lessons through vehicle texts that are closely linked with our aspirational Early Years curriculum.

Ready Steady Write

We use the 'Ready Steady Write' approach from Literacy Counts as the basis for our daily, discrete writing lessons from Reception to Year 6. Our writing units centre on high quality, engaging and ambitious 'Vehicle Texts', which inspire children's writing across a range of genres. Where possible and relevant, these Vehicle Texts link to the foundation subjects.

Daily sentence accuracy lessons take place across school, and are a vital element of our approach to develop children who have a strong command of the written word. These lessons encompass word, sentence, and punctuation from the statutory National Curriculum programme of study for writing and Appendix 2 (Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation). This daily practice also helps build fluency and stamina for writing.

Units of writing are carefully planned and tailored for each class, using a structured writing sequence of 'Immerse, Analyse, Plan, Write'. Key elements of grammar, punctuation and spelling appropriate to the year group are woven through each unit and Daily Sentence Accuracy lessons. Throughout the teaching sequence, all children are given the opportunity to read and analyse 'Greater Depth' pieces of writing in a particular text type as an aspirational example. Throughout each unit, teachers and support staff look where children need extra assistance and offer swift intervention to provide the children with the skills to produce high quality writing.

IMPACT

The impact of our approach to writing at Arden is consistently strong and rapidly improving.

We have a particularly strong focus on writing moderation at Arden. This supports our aspiration for excellent standards across school, as well as ensuring that judgements are accurate and fair. Two members of the teaching team, including the Writing Lead, are Local Authority moderators and Cluster Leads for Key Stage One and Two and work across the borough in this capacity.

We conduct regular whole school, key stage and year group moderation in-house, as well as moderation exercises with year group colleagues in writing clusters. Staff engage with the Local Authority moderation process and participate in moderation meetings.

We scrutinise the efficiency of our teaching approach and its impact on children's knowledge, understanding and progress through:

- Information from formal book scrutinies
- Termly teacher assessments
- Performance data (since the introduction of Read to Write in November 2022, we continue to see a positive trend in performance data across school)
- Subject leader monitoring
- Learning walks
- Lesson observations
- Lesson drop ins
- Weekly 'Friday Flicks'
- Pupil voice
- School Improvement Team liaison
- Governor visits
- Writing 'One Voice' documentation

MODERATION 2024

We were delighted to be visited by writing moderators from the Local Authority in June 2024, who confirmed that writing at Arden was above national average. Please click on the following link to read our moderation report:

2024 WRITING MODERATION REPORT

PROGRESSION ACROSS YEAR GROUPS

The following documents show how writing builds upon prior learning and progresses within and across each year group at Arden.