Writing is a complicated practice that relies on both motor skills and cognitive skills; pupils have to orchestrate spelling, handwriting, accurate sentence structure, linguistic choices and textual cohesion. At Trent Young's we approach writing through the 'simple view of writing' designed by researchers into best practice, and to focus on the three concepts in writing.  We recognise that despite the title of the simple view of writing, writing is a complex and increasingly demanding task as children progress from novice to expert to disciplinary writers.

• Transcription: We believe that for children to be successful writers they need strong accurate and fluent foundations in spelling and handwriting.  We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised SSP programme, which provides the basis for strong teaching of phonics and letter formation in EY and early KS1.  This grows into the progression model for transcription knowledge across the school.
• Composition: We recognise that to compose our writing successfully we need an increasing knowledge of vocabulary, language, grammar and its effects, text and sentence structures. 
• Executive Function: We recognise that despite the title of the simple view of writing, writing is a complex and increasingly demanding task as children progress from novice to expert to disciplinary writers.  Executive function is our ability to self-regulate through writing tasks, allowing us to plan, sustain our attention and stick to our learning goals.  As part of the writing process, use metacognitive questioning throughout our writing lessons to support pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their approaches, supporting both their executive function and their self-regulation.

Transcription

At Trent Young's we believe that for children to be successful writers they need strong accurate and fluent foundations in spelling and handwriting.  We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised SSP programme, which provides the basis for strong teaching of phonics and letter formation in Early Years and early Key Stage 1.  This grows into the progression model for transcription knowledge across the school.

Spelling

In Year R and 1 children follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised SSP programme - more information about this and ways to support children at home can be found here.

Children in Year 2 move onto Little Wandle Spelling, which builds on children's knowledge of the alphabetic code and teached them how to spell with confidence.  The programe provides a seamless link from the core Little Wandle programme to teaching spelling in Year 2. 

Beyond the SSP, children continue to apply phonics as their main strategey whilst developing their awareness of alternative spellings, etymology (where words orginate from) and morphology (how words are structured, such as adding prefixes and suffixes).  In KS2 we use 'no nonsense' spelling to guide the teaching and learning alongside the National Curriculum and identified common errors made by the children.

Handwriting:

At Trent Young’s CE School we build solid foundations in letter formation through our systematic, synthetics phonics teaching programme, this teaches children the shape and orientation of letters. We then use PenPals handwriting programme to support children to become accurate, fluent writers.

The process of writing needs explicit teaching and modelling to children with thoughtful small steps built up over a sequence of lessons to support early and novice writers, in order that children will be able to write independently with success. Whilst children are in the early-novice writing phase, we believe that it is vital that focussed teaching time is given to practice and master the components of handwriting – detailed below. Children need to practise handwriting under the guidance of an adult to ensure accuracy and avoid habits which will be difficult to undo later.  Children are expected and held account for accurate letter formation, including size, orientation and relationship to the line. Once accuracy is achieved, children are taught to become faster fluent writers through considering their sizing and orientation before learning how to accurately join and write at speed legibly. 

Composition

At Trent Young's, we recognise that to compose our writing successfully we need an increasing knowledge of vocabulary, language, grammar and its effects, sentence structures and audiences to write for (genres).  The substantive knowledge that we teach is ambitious, informed by the national curriculum and organised into key concepts. 

Executive Function

Executive function is our ability to self-regulate through writing tasks, allowing us to plan, sustain our attention and stick to our learning goals.  At Trent Young's, we use metacognitive questioning throughout our writing lessons to support children to plan, monitor and evaluate their approaches, supporting both their executive function and their self-regulation. We also include here in our thinking, motivation to write. Children need to pursue writing excellence in the context of having all the necessary building blocks to write well. We believe that all children can write with success.