Writing

At Olton, teachers use a range of techniques to engage children in the English lesson. Visual literacy, enlarged texts, books or pictures are used at the start of a unit of work to stimulate and enable children to experience what they will be writing about. Drama and role play are also used to encourage interactive learning and promote the children’s imagination, as an aid to scaffolding their writing. At the start of the writing process children are exposed to many samples of the writing genre, this fundamental stage provides the opportunity to introduce children to a specific genre form, enabling them to capture ideas and secure understanding. As the writing process continues, the teacher models writing and undertakes shared and guided writing to develop the children’s knowledge and skills, in readiness for the independent writing they then undertake for each unit of writing.

During the English lesson the teacher will engage the whole class in shared reading or writing focussing on specific skills to be developed. The children then work in groups or individually, on independent activities differentiated by the teacher according to ability. In addition to the English lessons, teachers plan for pupils to practise and apply the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired through English lessons to other areas of the curriculum through cross-curricular learning.

Children are taught spelling through a whole school approach based on investigation and graphene grafters. Children are taught a range of strategies to help them to spell unfamiliar or irregular words through progression and recall.

Extra Writing Resources

• Spelling Shed – Practise spelling rules
• Small Town Superheroes – Use SPAG skills to be a hero
• Karate Cats – Learn punctuation skills