Writing

A child who learns to write at South Malling will develop a passion and curiosity for the craft of writing.

Through studying inspirational writers, they will learn the impact and importance of the written word. Our writing curriculum enables pupils to express their own voice, writing for authentic purposes – to entertain, to inform and to persuade – and is underpinned by rigorous teaching of spelling, grammar and punctuation that will equip them with the skills an expert writer needs in life.

It is our belief that throughout the course of their time at South Malling children should be excited by language and writing and enjoy experimenting and playing with it. Pupils are supported through a shared writing sequence structure which  is consistently applied across the school. This allows all children the chance to ‘say it before they can write it’ as well as developing depth and mastery of writing in a range of text types and genres, including planning, grammar, punctuation and spelling, fluency and structure.

Writing sequence

Each writing sequence is made up of five parts and is intended to take approximately three weeks.

Experience it 

Pupils are exposed to the text and the context, gaining a deep understanding of the text type and vocabulary – reading, analysing, discussing and comparing examples. They will be guided through an analysis of effective language, grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as authorial intent in order to co-create a success toolkit (e.g., what makes a good…persuasive leaflet).  

Play with it 

Children will be guided through play with words, grammar, punctuation and sentence construction to practise skills and enhance their depth of knowledge - creating sentences, paragraphs or even short sections of a text, reflecting on their own effects as a writer and evaluating their success of sticking to the success toolkit. 

Use it  

Using their deeper understanding and enhanced skills, children will create their own versions of the text. Teachers will model, teach, review and support the planning and writing of quality texts.  Children will begin to choose the features they use.  There will be opportunities for paired and group writing in order to develop language skills and generate ideas.  Scaffolds will be slowly removed during this stage and the success toolkit developed in the ‘experience it’ stage will be used. 

Improve it 

Children will respond to their own writing and the writing of their peers. Pupils can explain the effect and impact of the features of their own texts. The teacher guides children to respond and reflect on ways forward in order to make meaningful changes so that children feel confident applying features independently in the next stage.  

Apply it 

Pupils will apply those skills in an independent, extended piece of writing in which they will plan, write and review  typically across two to three days creating a piece of writing in the same style with a different topic, idea, audience or purpose.