We want the children at Wilkinson to have a positive attitude towards writing. Planning, therefore, is crucial so that exciting, demanding and purposeful activities are in place.  Our writing genres are all based around the topic being taught to the year group. Once topics and genres have been identified, long term planning then comes from the Literacy Framework which sets out the areas of work the children have to cover. Medium term planning allows the staff to cover a range of genres, spelling, sentence and grammar work across the term. Short term planning is the weekly planning so that the children are taken on a journey throughout the week building on, embedding, introducing skills and concepts that will allow them to be able to write fluently and with a growing maturity.

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Children experience writing a range of text types allowing them to take part in different tasks such as writing letters, developing story writing, producing a poem, taking part in newspaper work, creating instructions for a variety of purposes, writing their own diaries, creating play scripts which can then be acted out. During the weekly lessons teachers lead the children enabling them to be able to write with increasing confidence in a range of tasks through teaching them further language, grammatical structures, layouts, key structural features of a text and new and exciting ways of formulating sentences.

 

These skills are taught through shared writing with the whole class and also through the use of guided writing which allows the teacher to explore essential skills with small groups of children each day within the class.

By the end of a series of lessons, the children are able to complete an extended piece of writing displaying their ability to write, at length, in a particular style.

By linking the writing to the current topic, children have a growing awareness of purpose and audience and write with a knowledge that the words appearing before them on the page have a long - lasting impact.

 

Regular writing events are held throughout the year e.g. Roald Dahl Week, World Book Week, Magic Book Week, Poetry Fortnight, Fairy Tale Fortnight, Shakespeare Fortnight, Nursery Rhyme Fortnight, trips out to a range of locations, visiting writers e.g. Andy Tooze – "Poet from the Peaks". Again, these activities are all aimed at giving the child a range of experiences from which writing will spring forth and from which a real purpose and delight in writing will emerge!