Intent
At Keir Hardie, it is our intent to provide our pupils with a curriculum that develops their love of writing, oracy and expands their vocabulary.
We aim to give our pupils a range of opportunities to orally rehearse and develop their vocabulary, enabling them to enhance their ideas, and communicate effectively, becoming confident writers. Our staff are committed to nurturing the love of writing across all subjects, modelling and sharing writing exemplars, providing tools and opportunities that enable pupils to plan, write, edit and improve, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts.
Our curriculum focuses on supporting our pupils to develop and celebrate their writing ideas, we broaden their experiences, through educational visits, choice of texts, workshops, hooks and drama, ensuring all our pupils are effectively supported and celebrated.
We want our pupils to enjoy and be confident in the skills and process of writing.
Implementation
Our curriculum genres are selected in consultation with staff, evaluating writing outcomes and following the national programme of study. Considerations are made from EYFS low starting points in Communication, Language and Literacy, a high percentage of pupils with English as a second language, disadvantaged pupils and SEND.
The T4W writing structure, Imitate, Innovate and Invent is used to differentiate, teach and develop writing. In planning and teaching writing, we expect teachers to ensure that learning journeys begin with a Cold task, which enables teachers to identify what pupils already know and understand, allowing teachers to accurately focus on writing gaps, identify targets and any misconceptions, plus plan for key skills and knowledge that pupils need to cover in the learning of the specific genres. Teachers plan exciting hooks to create an engaging stimulus that motivates learners and scaffolds relevant vocabulary. Grammar and spelling skills are introduced throughout the writing process giving pupils opportunities to learn and apply their spelling and grammatical knowledge to their writing.
Impact
By the end of Year 6, our pupils make good progress from their starting points. All our pupils make good progress against attainment expectations in English and continue to meet or exceed national and local attainment data (both at the end of KS1 and KS2).
Our pupils successfully transfer key writing skills across the curriculum and the Talk for Writing structure is evident in books. Pupils enjoy writing and can confidently write for different purposes and audiences, as evidenced through book moderation, lesson observations, pupil conferencing and pupil voice.
Evidence in books shows our pupils make good progress from the Cold to the Hot tasks. Teachers moderation of pupils work half termly in phase groups and with other schools ensures accurate assessments are made and outcomes benchmarked, informing future areas for improvement and evaluating the impact of new initiatives.
