Writing

Click here for our curriculum intent document.

 

Writing at Acacias

At Acacias, we aim to ensure that our children leave us with a solid set of skills that will enable them to be confident and effective writers, ready for the next part of their education.

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Within each sequence, there are many opportunities for incidental short-burst writing with an extended written outcome by the end of each unit.  Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.

 

Our approach to writing follows the sequence below:

Gateway

This is an opportunity to hook the pupils into the context of learning and to assess previously taught mastery skills. A short writing task is set at the end of this session to assess the application of Gateway skills (previously taught skills from previous year groups).

Pathway

In this section, the Mastery skills are introduced with many opportunities along the way to practise and apply these skills in different writing tasks. The tasks use genres that the pupils will be most familiar with such as character or setting descriptions, dialogue, diary entries, instructions, poetry and sentence work, providing a range of on-going evidence for writing assessment.

Writeaway

This final section of the sequence begins with sectioning and sequencing texts using a model. If the final outcome is narrative based, then this will usually be the text which has been read or for younger pupils a shortened version to support re-telling has been included. If the outcome is a non-fiction text, then a model will be available for the children to use. Within the Writeaway, pupils are encouraged to plan, write, check, edit, re-draft and publish as required; with the focus on using and applying the mastery skills they have been taught.

 

You will find the end of year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.