At St Margaret’s Primary school it is important to us that all children in the school enjoy writing and are helped to achieve their best writing practice by consistently effective teaching. The school has developed a cross curricular approach that succeeds well with all its children. The skills and strategies our children learn through the Read Write Inc programme is implemented and encouraged in their writing.

 

Ofsted’s focus within writing is for the opportunity of extended writing and the level of quantity and quality children produce. We share this focus as an important element of the teaching of writing at St Margaret’s. Our children take pride in their books and this reflects in their writing books showing the efforts and progress they have made. Writing areas are located in every classroom and in corridors to encourage a variety of styles of writing and the use of talk for writing promotes extended writing skills by the children.

As a school we share ‘Creative writing days’ where the whole school are involved in a whole day creative writing project. We believe a stimulating learning environment with clear modelling and expectations sets children up to become fantastic writers. We take pride in our learning environments both in the classroom and corridors. By taking children in to their imaginative and inspiring setting, this motivates children to explore language and build on their writing ideas.

 

We use the Read Write Inc. Literacy and Language programme, which is a complete literacy programme for fluent readers who are secure enough in their phonic knowledge and reading fluency to move on from the Read Write Inc Phonics programme. The Literacy and Language programme is totally aligned to the new National Curriculum in a fun and meaningful way that leads children to write and discuss texts with maturity.

 

The programme gives every child a deep understanding of what they read using the special 'three reads' approach. Children read the bare bones of a story to begin with then build on their deeper level of understanding through two more reads using prompts and actions. The programme teaches grammar in context so that children can apply it flawlessly in their own writing. It also supports the grammar and punctuation aspects of Key Stage 1 and 2 expectations and includes practice tests to build confidence prior to statutory assessment. Literacy and Language helps to create articulate speakers who can justify their answers and learn how to debate in a controlled and uncontrolled learning environment.