Writing

•         express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word;
•         produce writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing; confidently
          use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling;
•         take pride in their work and have a fluent, cursive handwriting style.

The Chacewater writing curriculum has been sequenced so that each term a broad range of quality texts is studied, from Year 1 to Year 6. Each teaching sequence is based around a core text and follows a three-part structure.   

Learning about the text: The purpose of this stage is to capture the children's interest and help them get to know the text really well. This is through both 'reading as a reader' - exploring and sharing personal responses to what they read - and through 'reading as a writer' - recognising and investigating the features the writer uses to engage and manipulate the reader. It often will involve some form of learning and remembering of trickier or interesting sections to be used as an initial model for writing. Each sequence will contain some or all of these:

•         a hook into the text
•         reading and responding to the text
•         comprehension activities
•         retelling the text
•         talking about the text
•         in role in the text/drama
•         vocabulary work - pull out speedy green words - tricky red words
•         analysing the text
•         grammar in context
•         identifying the structure of the text

Practise writing: During this stage, children try out the elements of writing they are less sure of so that they can use this experience when writing independently. This means they need opportunities to play around with the language and structures they've been learning about and will be supported by their teacher(s). In teaching sequences, this section tends to include many of the following:

•         generating ideas to write about and one idea chosen
•         a shared activity to generate content for the chosen content
•         recording key ideas alongside the structure of the text
•         telling and talk to generate the text
•         story mapping the text where necessary
•         modelling / shared writing
•         editing writing
•         proof-reading writing.

Independent Writing: Children choose their own content to write about and collect ideas. These can then be recorded on the text structure chart as one method of planning, but individual sequences may suggest a number of alternative ways to plan and organise a piece of writing. Children write their text using proof-reading and editing to improve it.

Word Level: is taught discretely using Spelling Shed
Spelling: is taught discretely using Spelling Shed
Handwriting: is taught discretely using Penpals.

Impact 
Each sequence has a clear outcome. Age-related learning outcomes in the form of detailed criteria support teachers to make judgements about the writing. There are statements for 'Expected' and 'Greater Depth'.  The use of an elicitation task can be used to identify starting points for the text type. This is a writing task that is completed before the children start the sequence so that their writing can be analysed and the sequence adapted in light of the children's needs.  Independent writing is then compared with the elicitation task to identify where progress has been made so that it is clear to the child.