Writing

The Importance of Writing

Airy Hill Primary School is committed to:

  • Developing fluent and creative writers.
  • Developing a love of literature.
  • Closing the language gap.

At Airy Hill, writing is taught daily using an ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach in Years 1-6. All writing units are linked directly to the high-quality text children are reading, analysing and discussing during reading comprehension sessions. This supports them to explore a variety of genres whilst being immersed in an engaging curriculum.

I do: At the beginning of each writing unit, pupils spend time unpicking and exploring a high-quality model text. Pupils will partake in rich discussions surrounding the text type, features and how this compares to other texts.

We do: Children will complete a piece of shared writing with the teacher. These lessons provide a scaffold for all pupils to understand how to plan, draft and edit their work to produce excellent writing. As the shared writing evolves, there is a gradual shift in input from the adult to the children’s independent outcome allowing them to invent and innovate.

You do: Each writing unit ends with an assessment writing piece. This gives the children opportunities to apply the knowledge and skills taught to their own independent outcome. Children will follow the same planning, drafting and editing process independently. Across each year, a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry writing units are planned for including text types such as character/setting descriptions, instructions, formal/informal letters etc.

We love to celebrate children’s writing, displaying it in classrooms and sharing with adults across school.

Working walls

A key aspect of our writing journey is the use of working walls across school. Our interactive displays allow pupils to utilise the resource to support their writing at multiple stages of the writing process. Throughout English lessons, our working wall progressively builds a bank of key knowledge for pupils to refer to during independent work. It works as a crucial scaffold for pupils to boost writing confidence, motivation and outcomes.

Here are some examples of our working walls in action: