Writing
At St Joseph’s, we value the importance of writing and the impact it has on all areas of the curriculum. We follow The Literacy Company’s ‘Pathways to Write’ from EYFS to Year 6. Pathways to Write ensures coverage and progression through the National Curriculum: mastery of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation skills; writing a range of genres; spoken language activities, including drama and presentations and the opportunity to apply these skills to extended, independent writing. This supports our pupils to develop and build on prior knowledge, so that the new information they are learning, can be stored in their long-term memory.
Pathways to Write – The Sequence
The Gateway
- The Gateway begins with a ‘hook’ session to intrigue and enthuse young writers.
- Pupils are given the opportunity to predict.
- The purpose and audience of the text is established.
- Pupils revisit previous Mastery skills and ongoing skills through an assessed piece of writing (Gateway task).
The Pathway
- New writing skills are introduced from the year group's curriculum, these are called ‘Mastery Keys’ and these are displayed in the classroom on the Working Wall.
- Writing opportunities are provided to practise and apply the skills taught. This is through short and extended writing tasks, including character descriptions, poetry, dialogue between characters, fact files or diary entries in role.
- Opportunities are provided to re-cap and apply previously taught skills.
- There are opportunities to challenge greater depth writers through a wider range of tasks e.g. changes to form, viewpoint and audience.
The Writeaway
- Pupils section and sequence texts, this can be independently or collaboratively.
- They create extended pieces of writing.
- Opportunity is given to apply Mastery Key skills.
- Time is given for planning, writing, checking, editing, redrafting and publishing.
- A fiction or non-fiction outcome will be written, covering a wide range of genres and themes over the year (Mastery task).