Writing is using written words in different styles and techniques to communicate ideas.

As authors we learn to:

Present neatly-by developing an understanding of handwriting and clear presentation

Spell correctly-by understanding the need for accurate spelling

Punctuate accurately –by understanding that punctuation adds to clarity of meaning

Write with purpose-by understanding the purpose or purposes for a piece of writing.

Use imaginative description-by developing an appreciation of how best to convey ideas through description

Organise writing appropriately-by using the correct grammar and other organisational features

Use paragraphs-by understanding how to group ideas

Use sentences appropriately-by using different types of sentences for clarity and effect

Present writing-by learning to reflect upon writing and reading their writing aloud to others

Analyse writing-by understanding how grammatical choices give effect and meaning to writing.

Introducing 'The Write Stuff' approach to writing...   

As a school we have adopted “The Write Stuff” by Jane Constantine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. ‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.

Key benefits of The Write Stuff:

• Support for teachers so that they have a deeper and more flexible knowledge of sentence structure.
• Pupils who understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.
• Standards improve because many worked examples are provided over the year that extend understanding through a wide range of genres and non-fiction text types.
• Children have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.
• Pupils know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.
• Children have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.
• Teachers have clear pathways of how to guide pupils in weak areas such as cohesion and paragraphs.

The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to 3 learning chunks. Each learning chunk has three sections:

• Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
• Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
• Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the model.

Children are challenged to ‘Deepen the Moment’ which requires them to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.

"The Write Stuff"  uses three essential components to support children in becoming great writers

The three zones of writing :-

• IDEAS -  The FANTASTICs uses a child friendly acronym to represent the nine idea lenses through which children can craft their ideas.
• TOOLS - The GRAMMARISTICS. The grammar rules of our language system and an accessible way to target weaknesses in pupils grammatical and linguistic structures.
• TECHNIQUES - The BOOMTASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual.

We have clear progression across all genres of writing, ensuring we are building on key writing skills year on year.

Please see our genre progression and writing progression documents below for further detail.