“Writing is the painting of the voice.”   Voltaire

At Kirkby Avenue Primary School our aim is for children to be inspired by writing and feel motivated to become confident and enthusiastic writers themselves.

At Kirkby Avenue Primary School, we recognise that writing is integral to all aspects of life and we mindfully endeavour to ensure that children develop an enthusiastic attitude towards writing. The skill of writing enables children to communicate with themselves and others while documenting and conveying their knowledge and ideas. Building on experiences, it encourages expression and higher order thinking skills to develop. We aim to create a culture of writing in our school, ensuring our children are given the best possible opportunities to build their capacity and confidence in a range of writing styles.

By creating a stimulating environment and employing appropriate resources, we are determined to provide all children with a supportive writing curriculum which will allow learners to recognise their full potential and develop their:

• Literacy skills
• Creativity
• Independence
• Inquiry skills
• Inquisitiveness
• Confidence

Our intent is:

• To ensure children can write with fluency, understanding and develop their author’s voice
• To develop children into imaginative, creative, independent, inquisitive, inquiring and confident writers 
• To ensure no opportunity is missed to foster an enjoyment of writing amongst children, and a recognition of its value, by setting work that is challenging, inspirational, motivating, has a clear purpose and audience, helping them to develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards writing, which will nurture a life-long love of writing.
• To ensure children are provided with opportunities to explore a variety of different genres and be exposed to high quality texts, providing a model for them to aspire to.
• To ensure children have a clear understanding of the writing process of planning, drafting, sharing, editing, revising and publishing their own work, and learning how to self-assess and peer assess.

Implementation

At Kirkby Avenue Primary School, we follow the National Curriculum for the teaching and learning of writing skills. We are committed to raising the standards of children’s writing to ensure that all children are progressing and achieving at least in line with national expectations. We follow the Education Endowment Foundation guidance reports ‘Preparing for Literacy’, ‘Improving Literacy in Key Stage One’ and ‘Improving Literacy in Key Stage Two’. In EYFS we follow the Early Years Framework and Development Matters together with our own school Writing Framework.

Opportunities for cross-curricular writing are identified and planned for as a way of consolidating and applying writing skills across different text types and different subjects. Stimuli and resources for teaching writing are carefully chosen and varied, while carefully considering the audience and purpose of each piece.

The planning of writing is designed with a whole range of things in mind – interests of the class, current events and also links to the class book. Ensuring that all writing opportunities are purposeful and have meaning for the children.

The curriculum will be monitored by the English Leads to ensure that planning provides challenge, stimulation and excitement to improve the standards of writing throughout school.

Our school provides daily English lessons that are progressive and support skills development.

Handwriting

• Children in all classes use a sharp pencil within their writing and move on to using a handwriting pen from LKS2.
• All children are supported to develop a consistent and fluent handwriting style and are taught the skills for holding equipment and good posture and sitting for writing.
• All children work towards the use of joined handwriting in their everyday writing tasks. Where progress on this appears to be slow, additional tailored handwriting support is organised and delivered.
• Handwriting lessons are timetabled across school as follows:

EYFS and KS1 – Handwriting is taught daily through the RWI program

LKS2 – Handwriting is taught weekly.

UKS2 – Handwriting is taught as an ongoing priority and focus.

• The handwriting of all adults in the school should reflect the high expectations that we have of our children.

Shakespeare Week across school was a wonderful blend of finding out about some of his famous plays, for example Year 2 had a great time learning about A Midsummer Night's Dream, Year 3 loved Romeo and Juliet, Year 4 children were fascinated with Othello, Year 5 and 6 enjoyed Macbeth. This was mixed with looking at stories that have been written more recently, but said to have links to Shakespeare and his writing - for example, EYFS looked at The Lion King and Year 1/2 a beautiful book titled Violet's Tempest. 

During the week we invited storyteller and author, Chris Connaughton into school to work with our classes on Shakespeare and his plays, through storytelling, role-play and drama. 

What an amazing week we had!