You can make anything by writing.

C.S Lewis (Author)

At North Fawdon, we recognise that writing is a skill that we use on a daily basis and is an essential part of everyday life. Writing forms an important part of our broad and balanced curriculum where we ensure that children develop a confidence and competence in writing that will empower them in future life. We recognise a key to unlocking the potential in our pupils is through the development of transcription (handwriting, typing, spelling), composition (knowledge of the world, of language, of texts) and executive function (how children manage the process of writing).

We place great emphasis on vocabulary acquisition, grapheme-phoneme correspondence/ spelling and fluent handwriting at all ages to enable children to fully express themselves. Using a Talk for Writing approach, we prioritise explicit teaching of oral language skills and the internalisation of the language patterns and structure of texts. All teaching is underpinned by the 5 big ideas below:

* How texts work 

* How language works  

* Desire to write  

* Transcription 

* Coherence

In our English lessons at North Fawdon, we use Talk for Writing – an approach to teaching which is based upon the principles of how people learn. All units of work follow the three-stage pedagogy:

‘imitation’ (where pupils learn and internalise texts, to identify transferrable ideas and structures), ​‘innovation’ (where pupils use these ideas and structures to co-construct new versions with their teachers), and ​‘invention’ (where teachers help pupils to create original texts independently). These tasks aim to improve writing ability by giving pupils an understanding of the structure and elements of written language.

The Talk for Writing approach enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. The approach moves from dependence towards independence, with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully.

Imaginative units of work are developed to create a whole-school plan