Writing 

At Willington Primary School, we have adopted ‘The Write Stuff’ approach to teaching writing, which was developed by a leading English consultant, Jane Considine based on evidence based research into the teaching and learning of writing. It consists of a clear and systematic approach to the teaching of writing, providing a step-by-step framework to support children in becoming successful writers.

The high quality modelling enables the children to succeed when they come to do their own independent writing and they love to see their own work regularly celebrated.

As a school, all children from the Early Years to Year 6 learn to write through the Write Stuff approach in order to bring clarity and consistency to the mechanics of writing and to enable our children to write effectively and coherently.

The Write Stuff uses 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:

1. Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.

2. Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.

3. 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 approach uses three essential components to support children in becoming great writers and these three zones of writing  are arranged into the

Writing Rainbow and include:-

• 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.

The Reception class use a Writing Rainbow specifically differentiated to meet the needs of the Early Years children and prepare them for future writing success. It supports the children's phonic learning and ensures language and vocabulary is developed to support the writing process.

Following a sequence of sentence stacking lessons based on a particular genre of writing, children are given the opportunity to show what they have learnt by planning and writing their own independent piece. After they have written their independent piece, their work is marked by the class teacher who identifies different aspects of their written piece to be edited before a final draft is completed.

The Write Stuff provides a balance of narrative and non-fiction writing throughout each term. Teachers have access to Write Stuff planned sequences of lessons matched to the English National Curriculum requirements for different age groups and may plan their own sequences of lessons using The Write Stuff approach according to the interests and abilities of current classes.