How we teach Writing
Writing
- In Broomhill Junior School, children will be writing for one of the four purposes: writing to entertain, writing to inform, writing to persuade and writing to discuss.
- Writing is taught in a 3-week cycle with 2 cycles being taught per term. The first cycle will be writing to entertain focusing on narrative writing. The second cycle will be another purpose covering different genres.
- The 3 weeks will consist of 3 lessons and are broken down as follows:
- I write
- We write
- You write
- There will be 2 genres covered in a term through this cycle process – one narrative and one nonfiction genre.
- The yearly breakdown is as follows:
| TERM 1 | TERM 2 | TERM 3 | TERM 4 | TERM 5 | TERM 6 |
YEAR 3 | Narrative Diary | Narrative Newspaper report | Narrative Instructions | Narrative Letter writing | Narrative Non-chronological report | Narrative Persuasive writing |
YEAR 4 | Narrative Non-chronological report | Narrative Persuasive writing | Narrative – Instructions | Narrative Non-chronological report | Narrative Explanation | Newspaper Persuasive writing |
YEAR 5 | Narrative Persuasive writing | Narrative Recount | Narrative Non-chronological report | Narrative Recount | Narrative Newspaper report | Narrative Explanation
|
YEAR 6 | Narrative Newspaper reports | Narrative Explanation texts | Narrative Persuasive
| Narrative Persuasive writing Non-chronological | Narrative Discussion
| Narrative Writing linked to play / memory books
|
Exciting Writing and Creative Writing
| YEAR 1 | YEAR 2 | YEAR 3 | YEAR 4 |
TERM 1
| Tortoise and the Hare
| The Worrysaurus | Red (A Crayon’s story) | The Buddy Bench |
TERM 3
| After the Fall
| A Joy Story (film) | The River | Ruby’s Worry |
TERM 5 | The Boy who Cried Wolf | The Dark | Mixed | Just Ask |
- Once a week will be a ‘Creative Writing’ lesson, which gives children the opportunity to practice their narrative writing skills.
- Each lesson will be based around a termly picture book used as a stimulus. In term 1, 3 and 5 this will be the Exciting Write book and in term 2, 4 and 6 it will be a book of teacher’s choice.
Year 3 Foundational Skills
- In Year 3, term 1 consists of transcription writing to ensure children are secure in fundamental writing skills before progressing to genres.
- The lessons will ensure children are secure in Y2 objectives and build on Y3 grammatical knowledge ready for them to apply to specific genres in term 2.
Spelling
- Spelling is taught 3 times a week.
- We follow the Spelling Shed Curriculum for Spelling.
- Spellings follow a 3-tier approach
- Tier 1: spelling rules and patterns (from Spelling Shed)
- Tier 2: Statutory words
- Tier 3: Subject-specific words for Maths, Science and Topic
- Spelling homework is set weekly on Spelling Shed.
Handwriting
- We use Twinkl Handwriting scheme to teach our handwriting.
- Handwriting is taught explicitly once a week with opportunities for children to practice independently at least two more times.
- We use continuous cursive writing, which means letters should have lead ins at the start.
- Letters are grouped into four families as listed below:
Ladder family | Curly Caterpillar family | One-armed Robot family | Zig-Zag Monster family |
l, i, u, t, y, j | c, a, d, e, s, g, q, o, f | n, m, h, k, b, p, r | z, v, w, x |
There are 3 types of joins:
- Diagonal joins (formed from the baseline)
- Horizontal joins (formed from the top of the letter)
- Descender joins (formed from the loop of the descender).
