At Ashby Fields Primary School we are committed to providing a high-quality writing experience that instils a love of writing and explores rich language with our learners. Our pupils are given the tools to be able to communicate their thoughts, ideas and emotions effectively.
We believe that high quality vocabulary and texts are the key to developing fluent and engaged writers; exposing our children to these enables them to utilise what they have experienced to create inspired, interesting and accurate writing. We make use of a wide variety of tools to build the required skills and knowledge the children apply in their writing:
- Early Years and Key Stage 1 use Read, Write, Inc for phonics to create the building blocks for writing. This includes spellings, writing dictated sentences (Hold a sentence), building their own sentences around a power word and editing sentences for accuracy.
- Jane Considine ‘The Write Stuff’ is used with our children from Year 2. These approaches consist of:
- FANTASTICS to build the vocabulary and phrases needed within writing.
- Sentence stacking – developing writing sentence by sentence, high-quality modelling and scaffolding of writing.
- Chunking of learning – breaking the content into short, snappy chunks to keep children engaged and interested using ‘Inspire, Model and Empower’ steps of learning.
- Grammar Hammer is used from Year 2 and focusses on grammar skills to ensure children have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the mechanics of writing.
- Drama is throughout all year groups to explore and inspire children. We make use of a wide variety of dramatic techniques such as hot-seating, conscience alley and freeze framing. With our younger pupils, we use puppets, small world play, masks and costumes to re-enact and change familiar stories.
- Kinetic Letters Handwriting program is used to ensure that children develop fluent, legible and speedy handwriting that can be performed with automaticity, so that the attention of the brain is on the content of the writing thus building stamina and skills to write at length. Mastery of handwriting is a key priority for us as a school.