Writing
EYFS
At St Mary’s, children in EYFS begin their early writing journey building upon the letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) they have learnt in their Bug Club phonics sessions. They match the sounds they can hear to writing the letters from their sound mats.
The children:
- learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds using rhymes. These are practised daily in daily wriggly writers sessions along with fine motor skills.
- Use ‘helicopter story telling’, where they tell stories to an adult who writes them down, the children then act out the story in whole class sessions.
Step-by-step guidance helps children move from writing simple sentences to extended texts such as invitations, letters, descriptive texts and non-fiction texts.
Year 1 onwards
Children in Year 1 upwards move onto our Texts That Teach writing sequences. Each teaching sequence is based around a core text, and follows a three part structure:
- Learning About the Text
- Practising Writing
- Independent Writing.
Learning about the Text
The purpose of this stage is to capture the children's interest and help them get to know the text really well. This is through both 'reading as a reader' - exploring and sharing personal responses to what they read - and through 'reading as a writer' - recognising and investigating the features the writer uses to engage and manipulate the reader. It often will involve some form of learning and remembering of trickier or interesting sections to be used as an initial model for writing.
Practising Writing
During this stage, children need to try out the elements of writing they are less sure of so that they can use this experience when writing independently. This means they need opportunities to play around with the language and structures they've been learning about and will be supported by their teacher(s).
Independent Writing
Children choose their own content to write about and collect ideas. Children write their text using proof-reading and editing to improve it.