English - Writing

There are many different aspects to writing well: writing for a range of purposes and audiences, vocabulary choices which are both ambitious and suitable to the type of writing alongside the technical aspects of spelling, grammar, punctuation and handwriting.

Below is some further information about how some of these different aspects are taught at our school.

The Write Stuff

At Hackbridge Primary School, we have based our approach on "The Write Stuff" by Jane Considine 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 chronologically and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own 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.

Spelling at Hackbridge Primary School

In the National Curriculum it is stated:

"Most people read words more accurately than they spell them.”

The younger pupils are, the truer this is. By the end of year 1, pupils should be able to read a large number of different words containing the GPCs that they have learnt, whether or not they have seen these words before. Spelling, however, is a very different matter. Once pupils have learnt more than one way of spelling particular sounds, choosing the right letter or letters depends on their either having made a conscious effort to learn the words or having absorbed them less consciously through their reading. Younger pupils have not had enough time to learn or absorb the accurate spelling of all the words that they may want to write."

Alongside spelling patterns which must be taught, there are lists of common exception words - these are words which pupils use frequently in their writing and therefore it it is important for them to learn the correct spelling.

At Hackbridge Primary School, we feel strongly about supporting children to be brave spellers.  We understand the importance of children learning to spell correctly, but we also want to engage and inspire children with a love of words.  This is why we have implemented the Jane Considine approach to spelling which puts the children's love of words at the heart of learning to spell. 

Lessons encourage children to look deeply at words, draw and build upon their knowledge of phonics from KS1 and make connections with spellings or letter patterns that they may already know. 

Starting in Year 2 and into all of our KS2 classes, the children complete spellings on a two-week timetable.

During week one, the children have one 50-minute block, split across two lessons.  The first part consists of an 'investigation' lessons where the children explore either proving or disproving a spelling hypothesis.  The second part consists of a 'go grapheme grafters' lesson where teachers share a maximum of 15 words (taken from the National Curriculum spelling rules and statutory spellings words for the phase) with the class.  They sound them out reinforcing the phonics teaching from KS1.  Children identify the sound that has the trickiest grapheme and think of words that have the same sound. 

During week two, the children have five 10-minute sessions that revist the etymology of words/a wide range of strategies/patterns/spelling rules that enable children to make connections between words. The lessons also teach new content across the year, exposing children to new spelling patterns and grammatical features linked to spellings, e.g. the use of apostrophes to show possession.

As a school we use the scheme 'The Spelling Book' which has been developed by Jane Considine to teach spelling across key stage two. At Hackbridge we introduce 'The Spelling Book' in Year 2. The scheme uses a phonics style approach which encourages pupils to explore the sounds within words. It also provides pupils with opportunities to investigate the origins and associations of words. Pupils are encouraged to be word detectives and 'dig deeper' as they develop spelling strategies.

Below is a video from Jane Considine, the creator of 'The Spelling Book', giving you further information about the scheme and how we are implementing it in school.

The Spelling Book by Jane Considine

Handwriting at Hackbridge Primary School

In Nursery and Reception, we introduce letters to pupils in print form so that they can become confident at identifying and writing these.

In Year 1, pupils progress to learning lead-in and lead out strokes in preparation for joining later on.

From Years 2 to 6, children learn to join their letters in the cursive style.

At the end of KS2 (Year 6), all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible, joined handwriting and understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.

We aim to make handwriting an automatic process which does not interfere with creative thinking.

Hackbridge Primary School Handwriting and Number Formation

Printed Writing in Nursery and Reception at Hackbridge Primary School

Pre Cursive Writing in Year 1 at Hackbridge Primary School

Cursive Writing in Years 2 to 6 at Hackbridge Primary School