At Hanley Swan we use ‘The Write Stuff’ by Jane Considine as a basis to teach writing. We teach through modelling writing and scaffolding so that the children and a clear idea on what to write. The purpose and audience of our writing,  determines the grammar, vocabulary and techniques taught. The children explore high-level, rich vocabulary and are taught grammar in context through different writing lenses on the Writing Rainbow. There are three lenses used to support children with their writing:

Fantastics – ideas for writing
Grammaristics – tools for writing
Boomtastics – writing techniques

When we teach using the ‘The Write Stuff’ approach we follow a method called ‘Sentence Stacking.’  This means that writing is organised to engage the children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing. We use a variety of stimuli including videos, drama, books, pictures, speakers and experiences. 

An individual lesson is based on one plot point or non-fiction shape and is broken into three learning chunks:

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

Following the sentence stacking, children are given the opportunity to show what they have learnt by planning and writing their own independent pieces of writing. The children are then encouraged to revise, evaluate and edit their work. This is done through teacher and peer feedback. The children are always encouraged to share and celebrate their work. We aim for our children to have a love of writing and to be proud of their work.

Handwriting

Daily handwriting sessions begin with warm up sessions that aim to strengthen core strength, shoulder stability and promote good posture. Children are initially taught to write in a pre-cursive script. Once they become fluent, they progress to joining letters and developing effective cursive handwriting. We also teach the skills needed to successfully publish their work to high standard.  We have termly handwriting competitions and the children are given awards for this.  

Spellings

Spellings are set weekly and taught daily through Somerset Literacy. This covers all the curriculum spellings for each year group and activities and games help to embed spelling rules and patterns.