Writing
Intent
Intent
At Bearbook Combined School, we facilitate a supportive environment that allows children to develop a love for writing, embracing the functional skills required alongside promoting their own personal flair for writing. We strive to provide a platform for children to express themselves confidently, through both spoken and written English. We want children to understand that writing is a powerful tool that can be used to express their personal voice, and provides a channel to communicate with the wider world. We provide meaningful opportunities for children to find pleasure in the writing process, including: discussion, reading, sharing, drafting, performing, reflecting and publishing. We want children to leave Bearbrook feeling empowered to express themselves through the spoken and written form of English.
Implementation
Implementation
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. 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.
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.
Impact
Our aim is to improve outcomes in writing at the end of KS2 using the T4W approach, as well as demonstrating strong progress during children’s time at Bearbrook. We hope children leave Bearbrook with high aspirations for themselves, as confident communicators, and continue to grow as they further their education.
Outcomes are slowly improving across the school, especially in KS1. This year 61 children from Y2-6 improved their writing 'grade' by the end of the year. 54% of children in Y1-6 are achieving at or above the expected standard for writing in their year group. The majority of children at Bearbrook enjoy writing, and are excited to learn new skills and stories to apply to their own work. We hope children leave Bearbrook with high aspirations for themselves, as confident communicators, and continue to grow as they further their education.
Assesssment
Termly PiXL assessments and data are used to identify areas for development in SPaG, with specific groups receiving targeted teaching through PiXL therapies.
PiXL progression grids are used on-going to support the planning and teaching of skills and knowledge for effective writing.
