Our approach to writing at Thirsk Community Primary School At Thirsk Community Primary our vision is to promote the individual growth of every child; to inspire confident learners, who believe in themselves as they aspire to achieve their full potential within our school, into the High School years and beyond into the work place.

 The intent behind our approach is that our children will: 

• Meet National Curriculum expectations and beyond across every year group; stimulating children’s creativity through a variety of ‘real’ writing opportunities.
• Have the ability to write fluently and with interesting detail on a number of topics throughout the curriculum – fostering a love for writing and an appreciation of its educational, cultural and entertainment values;
• A highly developed vocabulary input to ensure that they can apply high level word choices to their own work;
• Have a well-organised structure to writing with genre knowledge and by using a variety of sentence structures;
• Have excellent transcription skills that ensures writing is well-presented, punctuated and spelled correctly.

Implementation

On entry to EYFS, writing skills are assessed as part of the school baseline assessment. Pencil grip is assessed using the Physical Development section of the EYFS Framework. Staff ensure that provision in EYFS reinforces gross motor and fine motor opportunities; development in the shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers. Activity examples include digging pit, mud kitchen, giant construction and adult directed activities to target agility, balance and co-ordination. Tracking early physical development is vital to support the development of writing skills. On a daily basis there are numerous different mark making opportunities with a purpose.

Where physical development is not at age related expectation, intervention strategies from the NHS Occupational Therapy for fine motor skills are introduced. The programmes have been developed to cover typical fine motor and handwriting difficulties experienced by primary school children. There are 6 programmes to choose from, arranged in a developmental sequence, starting with foundation skills in movement and body awareness, moving on to more complex fine motor and pre-writing skills, all the way up to handwriting fluency.

Each programme is designed to run for a half term (6 weeks), with 3 short sessions (approximately 20-30 minutes) per week. The children learn to write their name during a daily ‘sign in’ session. Name Cards are also available in all areas and the children are encouraged to label their work. Additionally, Reception children are taught writing in teacher led ‘bite-sized’ chunks which are built on at the end of their phonic lesson when developmentally appropriate. These sessions increase in length over the year as phonological and physical skill increases. Children are taught the writing position and correct pencil grip, with daily writing taking place using pencil and paper.

Children are expected to answer oral questions in full sentences. This is scaffolded by staff providing sentence stems. Children become proficient at this and progress seamlessly onto answering written questions in the same way as they move up through the school

In EYFS children learn to:

• Write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of rhymes and phrases.
• Segment (sound out) and to spell using phoneme fingers and encouraged to ‘split it up’.
• Build sentences by orally rehearsing sentences before they write.

Talking:

• Children work in pairs to:
• Answer questions
• Practise activities with their partner
• Take turns to read and write together
• Develop ambitious vocabulary

Handwriting: From October half term, handwriting is embedded within the daily phonics session but it is also practised during other teacher led sessions – for example ‘sign in’ and through core provision based writing links. When introducing new graphemes, the teachers build a strong connection between the letters that represent that sound.

As well as being taught to recognise the grapheme, children learn to recite the letter formation rhyme to help embed the correct formation in the long-term memory. They practise the formation in the air, on their partner’s backs and then finally in their books. The expectation is that they recite the rhyme every time they practise forming the letter. Partners check each other’s work and are taught how to give feedback.

In every teacher led session every child has access to the alphabet prompt. They are encouraged to use the alphabet prompt to support their recognition of letters as well as their independent letter formation. Constant attention is paid to formation to prevent bad habits developing. For example marking is used to identify any poor formation with the children being expected to correct and practise. Use of the alphabet prompt is also greatly encouraged during independent learning time and is available throughout the provision areas.

In Reception children use lined paper and are taught to orientate their letters correctly on the line. In Reception the teacher models strategies that will help children become confident writers, for example, referring to a sound mat for the correct grapheme needed and rereading what has been written so far. Children then have a turn at writing after they have secured the ability to recall the sentence they have been asked to write. Children can then add their own sentences and share their writing in the author’s chair. Children are rewarded with ‘Teach and Support’ points for using the strategies that the teacher models. Progression in early writing in EYFS is tracked using the stages of writing below.