Writing

At Shiremoor Primary School, children study a range of different writing genres – many of which link to their learning across other areas of the curriculum. Teachers plan using a ‘plan backwards’ approach which enables children to become fully immersed in the genre that they are studying and become secure in the grammatical features of each text type.

Children begin each writing unit by reviewing their previous knowledge of text types and studying ‘model texts’ (which have been specifically designed by Grammarsaurus to link to our wider curriculum) and a range of high-quality literature. Teachers use these texts to teach grammatical, presentational and language features of different genres. Children become more adept in identifying and constructing their own writing using these features. Writing lessons will usually follow the structure of:

• Diagnostic tasks - to assess previous knowledge of the text type
• Text deconstruction – to allow children to be immersed in the text type and identify key grammatical, presentational and language features
• Contextualised construction – to enable children to learn and applying specific features of the text type in shorter bursts of writing
• Reconstruction – to enable children to compose, construct and create their own writing in the style of the model text.
• Assess and feedback – to allow teachers to assess progress in writing linked to the key features of the text type and give children the opportunity to edit and improve their compositions based on feedback.