Writing
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’
Martin Luther
At Holmesdale we want our children to see themselves as writers. We aim to give children the knowledge and skills they need to become creative, confident, and independent authors who write for a purpose and an audience. We want to encourage children to develop a love of writing through the exposure to stimulating texts, careful modelling, and skilful teaching so children have the autonomy and freedom to communicate their ideas to others as they become thinkers, creators, and future makers.
Writing at Holmesdale
As a staff we agree that when planning or delivering writing lessons, we will ensure
- A clear planning sequence that is both achievable yet challenging, based on the ‘Teach Through the Text’ approach from Literacy Tree. Lessons are based on a wide range of high-quality children’s literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and informed writers.
- Children are aware of the audience and the purpose for their writing.
- Teachers plan and teach with high expectations for outcomes of the children.
- Teachers carefully plan a sequence of lessons with a clear end point in mind.
- Sequences of lessons will offer many opportunities for the oral rehearsal of ideas including drama, role-play and talk partners.
- Lessons will include a WAGOLL (what a good one looks like)
- Teachers model writing in every lesson
- Children will be encouraged to write for pleasure and given frequent opportunities to write about what interests them.
- Offer opportunities to embed grammar, spelling, and punctuation in context.
- Lessons offer exposure to high quality vocabulary.
- Children are given the opportunity to edit, improve and publish their writing.
- Makes are marvellous and are celebrated.
- Discrete handwriting lessons are taught, and staff have high expectations in terms of presentation of writing.
- Children are given high quality feedback in the moment.
As with all areas of our curriculum, we have drawn on research evidence to shape our teaching and learning pedagogy. For more information, please see our Greensand Pace Model.
