Writing, Spelling and Grammar

How We Teach Writing at Park Lane

Writing at Park Lane is planned to ensure our children are given a broad, rich and interesting diet of different genres and purposes of writing. We link our writing as closely to our reading lessons and our wider curriculum subjects. Our aim in writing is to encourage children to develop their understanding of their role as an author, writing for a purpose and audience, and to encompass reading for pleasure into their own writing.

In line with national moderation processes, we use work produced in both daily English, Cross- Curricular work and assessed tasks to make a Teacher Assessment to inform our next units.

Units of work are informed through The Write Stuff planning structure and methodology. This has a clear focus on sentence construction, spelling and grammar in line with the National Curriculum. We embed the foundational and trancriptional skills needed in setence construction to build longer pieces and stamina for writing.

At Park Lane we provide an ambitious and rich writing curriculum for our children that is tracked and monitored for progression and impact by our Writing leads. This sentence construction and understanding is developed in EYFS and KS1 to ensure the children are secure in this before they move on to progress to undertsanding features futher as they move into KS2 and beyond. 

How does The Write Stuff Approach support all learners in our school?
1. Experiences - we consider and plan to ensure all children have the chance at the experiences needed to build ideas on which to write at a relevant point within their learning. There are no assumptions, the experience days are varied and provide an opportunity to talk and build up a vocabulary bank which is meaningful and of high expectations. The experience has a direct link to the learning and can happen at any needed point within the teaching. This encourages oracy and spoken rehearsal of ideas and sentences before writing.
2. Scaffolds- The Writing Rainbow scaffolds learning providing clear ideas, tools and techniques for writing. Teachers develop and create their own scaffolds to ensure every child has the equity needed to access the high pitch and expectations of learning at a level that supports their individual development.
3. Vocabulary and words are integral to every lesson. This provides opportunities for children to be
exposed to a growing number of words and begin to identify the effect and nuance they bring to the
meaning of the writing. (Recommendation 1 in EEF guidance report Preparing for Literacy, Improving
Literacy in KS1 and Improving Literacy in KS2)
4. High expectations for all children. A strong, high quality model will direct the children to craft high
quality sentences themselves. (Rosenshine’s principles for Modelling, Scaffolding, Guided Practice and
Independent practice. Recommendation 5 in Improving Literacy in KS1) Thinking out loud during the
model also links to developing metacognitive strategies (EEF Guidance report Metacognition and Self
Regulation recommendation number 3)
5. Success drives motivation and working in sentences with clear goals sets an achievable target.
Building the writing over time in a directed way provides the support needed to deliver independent writing
at a later date.
6. The structure of the lessons into chunks prevents the working memory being overloaded and therefore
offers a higher chance of success, building self esteem and motivation. (Cognitive Load theory
Recommendation number 4 EEF Metacognition)
7. Relationships are developed through the approach; talking partners, kind calling out and sentence
selection and appreciation all provide a positive respectful learning relationship to evolve between
pupils and adults.
8. All children, including our most vulnerable, have a voice within the approach. The expectation to chot ideas
and Kind calling out mean everyone’s contribution can be valued. Also it promotes metacognitive talk in
the classroom (Recommendation 5 EEF Metacognition)
9. Feedback through sentence stacking wall appreciation and editing promotes independence and
a sense of ownership. The feedback is more likely to be well received due to the positive relationships
and the sense of success and ownership.
10. The nine areas above support us as teachers to provide high quality teaching using direct instructions
but setting high expectations of all. 

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

To understand the key terms and examples for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) please use the the following diagram or click this link to access a helpful glossary of key grammar terms:

english glossary.pdf

Year Group Assessment Frameworks

You can download and view the assessment framework as applied to each year by clicking on the relevant link below. These detail the expecations of each year group and what your child needs to achieve in writing.