There are two main reasons why we write:

1) To make meaning;

2) To communicate meaning.

At Breadsall Hill Top Primary School, writing for an authentic purpose sits at the heart of our writing curriculum.  Writing instruction can be broken down into two parts:

1) Transcription - the physical process of writing;

2) Composition - crafting the text.

As with reading, children's journey to becoming independent writers begins in EYFS and KS1, where children begin to further develop their vocabularies.  Talk is the foundation of all writing, allowing children to think about how to connect the ideas in their heads without making them concrete by writing them down.  As their ability to express themselves orally develops, children are then taught the physical skills of writing such as completing exercises to strengthen the bones and muscles in their hands, how to hold a writing implement correctly and how to make marks on paper.

Through using the Read Write Inc scheme, children develop their phonic knowledge to include phoneme and grapheme correspondence, enabling children to recognise the graphemes (letters) which relate to the sound they want to write down to create the word (for more information, see the Phonics curriculum link).

As the children become more secure with their transcription skills, we then begin to weave in the composition skills that children will require to 'craft' their own pieces of writing.  As with reading, this takes more precedence in the Spring Term of Year 2 with the introduction of discrete writing lessons.

Writing, Reading and the Wider Curriculum

Hochman, the author of 'The Writing Revolution' and Lemov, the author of 'Reading Reconsidered' state that reading and writing are knowledge-based endeavours and she be embedded in content and not taught as isolated skills.  As such. writing from the Spring Term of Year 2 is based around an overarching topic and driven by well chosen texts, where children have the opportunity to connect their learning from other areas of the curriculum, allowing them to deepen their understanding of the knowledge gained.

At the beginning of the process, children are given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the text-type being taught often through Shared Reading and through 'deconstructing' examples of the text-type that the will be writing so that they can recognise its compositional elements and can then apply this within their own independent writing.

During Week 2 of the process, children are also taught the spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG) aspects of the National Curriculum that complement the text type being composed.

Children then begin to independently apply their learning to a first draft of their writing which is then revised, edited and redrafted where necessary.  Finally a published piece is produced that can be shared with the children's chosen audience.