Writing at White Rock 

'Read like a writer and write like a reader'

INTENT

At White Rock, our aim is to ensure that we foster a love of writing and that our pupils understand how reading and writing are linked. Our overarching ethos is "Read like and writer and write like a reader" and we believe that the quality of books that inspire our writing is extremely important. Therefore we follow the highly regarded Book Writes scheme of learning to ensure our children experience a range of texts and genres in their writing which in turns increases their cultural capital. 

Our Writing journeys start with exploring and immersing the children in a high quality text. Spoken language play an important role in developing our pupil's writing therefore all unit plans incorporate oral activities such as hot seating or retelling a text with actions. 

We want every child to leave our school with the appropriate writing skills to ensure that they are successful when leaving us and moving up to Key Stage 3. In order to do this, we plan within year teams to ensure that each class is consistent but also ensure that we build upon the successes from the previous year's learning. 

We also work closely with some of the local secondary schools to ensure that our writing lessons provide our pupils with the skills they need for academic writing in Secondary school.

IMPLEMENTATION

We follow the Book Writes scheme of learning for our Writing lessons. Please click on the links below to see an overview of the texts we will be using for each year group. 

IMPACT

We regularly assess the impact of our writing curriculum through 'blinks' monitoring visits, modelling lessons to new members of staff, encouraging our staff to observe on another, looking through learning journey books with our pupils and gathering pupil voice. Some responses from our pupil voice discussions will be added to this page later on this academic year. 

Boys writing at White Rock

We believe that all children have the ability to be excellent writers. So, with this in mind, we plan our themes around topics that the children themselves have suggested. These have included Do all Heroes wear capes and currently we are learning about 'A day in the life of.......' High quality examples of independent writing are then displayed across the school with many of them being written by our amazing boys!

Handwriting at White Rock Primary School

INTENT

At White Rock, we aim for our children to leave in Year 6 with the ability to write using their own style of fast, fluent, legible and sustainable handwriting, as well as other styles of writing for specific purposes. In addition to teaching handwriting during our regular handwriting lessons, we have high expectations that what is taught and practiced in handwriting lessons will be used in all writing activities. We believe that handwriting is integral to a child’s personal development and know that children’s engagement and self-esteem can be improved by their satisfaction and pride in good quality presentation.

Handwriting is a taught skill that develops at different rates for different children. All of the teachers at White Rock put a priority on teaching handwriting and have high expectations for handwriting across the curriculum. Our school uses Penpals for Handwriting to ensure that:

• The importance of handwriting is recognised and given appropriate time.
• The progression of handwriting is consistent across the school.
• Handwriting is acknowledged to be a whole body activity and emphasis is placed on correct posture and pencil grip for handwriting.
• Expectations of left-handed children are equal to those of right-handed children, and appropriate advice and resources are available to ensure that they learn to write with a comfortable, straight wrist.
• Children learn to self-assess their own writing and develop understanding and responsibility for improving it.
• Children learn to write in different styles for different purposes such as print for labelling a diagram, illustrated capitals letters for creating a poster, swift jottings for writing notes, making a ‘best copy’ for presentation and fast, fluent and legible writing across the curriculum.

Progression of skills

• First, children experience the foundation of handwriting through multi-sensory activities (EYFS F1 and F2).
• Little Wandle's letter patter is used to support the correct letter formation. It is then  practised, applied and consolidated (EYFS F1/Y1). 
• Joining is introduced (Y1/Y2/Y3) using Penpals.
• Joins are introduced systematically and cumulatively (Y2–Y6).
• As children practice joining, they pay attention to the size, proportion and spacing of their letters and words (Y3–Y6).
• Once the joins are secure, a slope is introduced in order to support increased speed and fluency (Y5).
• Children are introduced to different ways of joining in order that they can develop their own preferred personal style (Y6).

Handwriting tools

Throughout their time at White Rock, children will use a range of tools for different purposes and styles of handwriting including:

• A wide range of tools and media for mark-making in the EYFS.
• Whiteboard pens throughout the school.
• Fingers when writing on the interactive whiteboard.
• Art supplies including coloured pens and pencils for posters, displays and artwork.
• Sharp pencils for writing in their Maths books.
• A handwriting pen for when they sustain a good level of presentation in Year 2 or when they enter Year 3.

Handwriting is always introduced and practised on whiteboards and on lined paper so that children quickly learn about letter orientation including ascenders and descenders. As children’s fine motor skills improve and their letter formation or joining becomes increasingly accurate, the width between the lines they write on gradually decreases.

Vocabulary used during our handwriting sessions

Equality of opportunity

All of our children have equal access to handwriting lessons and to the resources available. We recognise that some children take longer to develop the necessary skills and we cater for those children by providing additional opportunities for skills development. Children who need specific fine motor or handwriting interventions are identified early and the impact of interventions is carefully monitored. 

Handwriting is celebrated at White Rock!

We celebrate our children's handwriting by displaying pieces of writing which show a significant improvement! Take a look at the learning on our class pages.

Year Five - A.I.M Writing Workshop 

This week some of our Year Five children visited Shiphay Learning Academy to attend the A.I.M High writing workshop. The workshop was run by the very talented author Colin R Parsons. He set the children a writing challenge called 'The Tunnel'. After sharing the names of the characters and a choice of setting, the children were asked to write their own short adventure story. Colin gave lots of advice and the children enjoyed sharing their stories with others at the end of the session. We now have 3 Colin R Parson books in our school library if you would like to read some of his work!