1. Writing at Gawsworth In The Early Years Foundation Stage and KS1 children at Gawsworth are introduced to writing using a phonetic scheme called ‘Read Write Inc’. ‘Read Write Inc. Speed Sounds’ are sent home alongside word building and sentence building activities. The close link between writing and reading is supported through the use of ‘Read Write Inc.’ skills being used and applied in children’s written work within topics studied.

2. Writing at Gawsworth From very early on, at Gawsworth, we work hard to develop the children’s writing alongside their reading. One of the key strategies is to teach the children to ‘hold a sentence’ from Reception. We constantly strive to improve the children’s experiences of writing even further.

3. Writing for Pleasure Encouraging children to develop a genuine love of writing. We adopt a speaking and listening approach to teaching writing as it has been proven that if children cannot say it then they cannot write it. We try to teach writing through our topic work to ensure that it always has purpose and we aim to make it as visual as possible through techniques such as ‘Rainbow Writing’ and the ‘Read Write Inc.’ red and purple words.

4. Strategies for encouraging writing Key Stage 1 Decode and encode words using the Set 1, 2 and 3 Speed Sounds – slow and careful stretching of words is crucial! Begin to teach the children basic spelling rules and strategies. Teaching children how to ‘hold a sentence’. Rainbow Writing: using red power verbs, purple power adjectives, orange openers and blue connectives. Reading their writing back and using a colour to check for use of Rainbow Writing. Focused marking (2* and wish) enables children to make improvements.

5. Strategies for encouraging writing Key Stage 2 We use the Read Write Inc. Get Spelling to continue to learn spelling strategies and rules. Rainbow Writing: using red power verbs, purple power adjectives, orange openers, blue connectives, green clauses. Giving the children a purpose for writing through topic work. Focused marking (2* and wish) enables children to make improvements.

6. Writing for Pleasure Home –School Links Pupils in Key Stage 1 are given the ‘Speed Sounds’ and ‘Word Time’ activities to work on with parents at home From Years 2 to 4, children work on Big Writing homework tasks which involve discussing writing tasks and working on effective language choices In years 5 and 6, this is further extended by completing project research tasks based around our topic work

7. Teaching of Writing How will writing be taught at Gawsworth? At Gawsworth, writing is taught through a variety of fiction and non-fiction units including narratives in the form of story-writing, recounts, instructions, reports, poetry and playscripts Children are taught to analyse and discuss the structural and linguistic features of the different text types Grammar is clearly linked to the specific text type being taught Often, books are used as a starting point and an inspiration for igniting writing

8. Assessment of Writing Assessment We are currently using the APP system of assessment for writing. However, this will be changing in the near future to come in line with the ‘New Curriculum’ and ‘Assessment Without Levels’.