Writing

At East Wichel, our teachers aim to provide writing experiences that enable our pupils to feel motivated and excited to write. We believe that reading widely is the best preparation for writing. Therefore, we start every English unit by immersing pupils in a high-quality text. 

We expose our pupils to a range of fiction and non-fiction writing genres including narratives, persuasive texts, non-chronological reports, explanation texts, biographies, diary entries, newspaper articles and poetry. 

We also maximise cross-curricular opportunities by applying the style, convention and techniques used within English to other areas of the curriculum such as Science, History and Geography. This enables pupils to be versatile by allowing them to exercise their writing skills within a variety of contexts. 

As a school, we believe very strongly that developing pupils' vocabulary has a significant impact on the quality of their writing. For this reason, we teach vocabulary across all areas of the curriculum, where pupils are exposed to ambitious vocabulary relevant to the area of learning and are revisited using a variety of retrieval practice activities.

In order for pupils to produce a good quality piece of writing, teachers dedicate a considerable number of weeks to each English unit by following the 'small steps' structure.

Pupils are immersed in a high quality text and are taught to analyse key language and structural features of the text.

They explore the grammatical features and adapt certain aspects of the text by using the author's style of writing. Teachers model high quality writing skills in small steps and give pupils the opportunity to do the same using the 'my turn your turn' approach.

At the end of every unit, pupils are given the opportunity to write a power piece where they apply the learning from the unit by independently planning, drafting and editing their own writing.