Our Text Driver Approach to Writing  

Early Years 

In Nursery and Reception, all children enjoy teacher-led ‘Drawing Club’ sessions.

In Nursery this builds from one to two sessions a week and in Reception there are 3 sessions per week. https://www.canigoandplaynow.com/drawing-club.html 

Within these sessions, children explore a new quality text each week. Through this text, children talk, build vocabulary, mark make and write. Children use their creativity and imagination by extending this learning through high-quality continuous provision. 

Building on the Drawing Club approach, the transition to Year 1 is supported through the ‘Curious Quests’ approach in 4 sessions per week. https://www.canigoandplaynow.com/the-curious-quests.html.  

Through high quality continuous provision, whole-class teaching and small group work, children complete a quest each week.  The children become immersed in a quality text, build vocabulary, apply their growing phonics knowledge and learn the Year 1 spelling, punctuation and grammar rules when writing each day. 

Key Stages 1 and 2 

English writing units are delivered through a carefully sequenced, text-driver approach in which a rich text drives the writing journey. Spoken language, reading, writing and grammar opportunities are planned intentionally to enable children to be successful in the final writing outcome.  Progression of text, sentence level and word level are carefully sequenced to allow children to build on prior learning and develop the transcription skills they need to write fluently. Throughout the year, children produce writing for a range of purposes, forms and audiences. 

• In the first stage, children engage in the text in the 'Engage and Explore' phase, in which they are hooked into the text and context, inspiring purposeful talk, opportunities to read, and build vocabulary.  

• In the second stage, 'Practise and Learn,' children learn from the author’s style and literary techniques. They learn and explore grammatical techniques and their effect on the reader. They practise and experiment with these at a sentence and paragraph level. 

• In the final stage of the journey, 'Create and Edit,' pupils will apply the skills they have been learning when working on their outcome. The writing process is prioritised, where children are taught to edit and refine their own and others' writing.   

At an appropriate opportunity in the ‘Text Driver’ journey, a ‘Site of Application Write’ presents the children with the opportunity to apply and retrieve previously taught skills and writing forms to a new context. 

Additionally Resourced Provision  

In our ARP, we develop emerging literacy skills throughout the day through highly motivating continuous provision that encourages communication and engagement. We also have a daily shared story, phonics, and singing session, as well as individual, adult-supported, English-focused learning sessions. 

Writing Portfolios 

• Each child at Bel Royal has a Writing Portfolio book. This book travels with each child throughout their journey at Bel Royal from Nursery to Year 6 to track and celebrate their writing progress. Writing in their portfolio is ‘unaided’ to carefully monitor and assess each child’s unique journey. 

Assessment 

Thorough and systematic assessments are used formatively to track attainment and inform next steps.  In English, these include:  

• Regular ongoing teacher assessments from guided and whole class reading  

• Half-termly RWI assessments   

• Ongoing (at least termly) PM Benchmarking assessments of all children in Reception, KS1 and children/classes appropriate in KS2.   

• Whole Class Assessment Record to be used when marking writing 

• YARC assessments to determine if children require extra intervention   

• Termly PIRA tests of all children KS1 and KS2 

• Termly GAPS tests of all children KS1 and KS2 

• Sight word / common exception word reading assessments 

• Sight word / common exception word spelling assessments  

• Reading Recovery assessments for pupils receiving intervention 

• No More Marking unaided Writing Assessments  

• Termly Pupil Progress Meetings  

Intervention: Using a range of assessment strategies, provision is made for children who require extra support with early reading through adaptive teaching, intervention programmes and targeted support. Some interventions currently provided at Bel Royal are Reading Recovery (Year 2), Pre-teaching, Precision teaching, Every Child Our Future Reading Volunteer allocation, Shine Intervention and the Herts for Learning Fluency Project. 

Spelling  

• In writing lessons, teachers will teach spelling in context at appropriate opportunities. 

• Age and stage-appropriate common exception words are taught from Reception to Year 6.  

• The Read Write Inc. Spelling programme is introduced in Year 2. Direct teaching underpins the programme. Spelling is taught cumulatively and systematically, with deliberate, focused practice. Constant revision and practice are key to children’s success.  

• Sentence Dictation is built into the curriculum from Years 1 to Year 6, allowing children to build transcription skills. 

The spelling programme: 

• makes sense of the most complex alphabetic code in the world- 150 spellings of 44 speech sounds.  

• builds upon teaching strategies and spelling activities from Read Write Inc. Phonics 

• is organised in 15 minute – well paced lessons at least 3 times per week 

The programme’s core activities teach: 

• alternative spellings of vowels 

• alternative spellings of consonants 

• homophones 

• the impact of adding prefixes and suffixes to root words 

• spelling plural nouns 

• ‘silent’ letters 

• unusual letter strings 

• word families. 

Through close monitoring, children who require support will receive additional intervention for spelling. 

Handwriting  

At Bel Royal we use Letter-join’s on-line handwriting scheme as the basis of our handwriting policy. This covers all the requirements of the National Curriculum. Handwriting is a basic skill that influences children’s fluency, spelling and confidence.   

Our intention is to make handwriting an automatic process that enables pupils to write fluently, allowing them to focus on their learning and creativity.   

Progression in handwriting is adapted, when appropriate, to ensure all pupils are included.  

• This begins in the early years when children’s fine and gross motor skills are prioritised daily before learning the tri-pod pencil grip and print letter formation.  

• In Key Stage 1 children continue to develop motor skills and begin learning the pre-cursive letter formations before learning to join lower-case letters in explicitly taught lessons. 

• In Key Stage 2, this is revised and reinforced through regular practice during at least two Letter Join sessions per week.  A focus is now on children adapting their handwriting for a range of purposes across the curriculum. (See handwriting policy for full progression map)