Writing

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” John Keating

Intent

At Oakwood Primary school we want children to be passionate and curious about writing and enable them with the skills to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word.

Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum at Oakwood Primary School. The Writing curriculum is structured using the ‘Four Purposes for Writing’. This is so that the focus is on teaching the purpose, audience and grammar for each piece of writing, rather than teaching genres. In this way, the children can make links between purposes for writing across year groups, rather than seeing genres in isolation. We always use a quality text on which to base all of our English work as well as a range of supporting texts. Teachers write or source a model text (WAGOLL – What A Good One Looks Like) that includes all of the grammar features to be taught in the unit. 

During their time at Oakwood we inspire children to be resilient writers who understand that it takes time and effort to produce our best writing: therefore we intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Our school value of teamwork is embedded in the teaching of writing with the emphasis on ‘Talk for Writing’ which is at the heart of the writing process at Oakwood. The children are encouraged to listen to each other, talk to each other, to magpie ideas and vocabulary from each other, in order to support and learn from each other throughout all stages of the writing journey.