Intent:
At Peakirk, we believe that children should be passionate writers who possess a natural flair for creativity, where their words are like artwork. They should confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their purposeful writing to make a positive impact in their local community and the wider world.
We believe writing is an art form where good writers are good readers. We encourage children to be authors in their own right, developing their styles through 'magpying' their ideas from other strong examples. We intend for all learners to be confident to explore and present a range of text types by understanding the genre and key features, adding their own unique style and writing 'signature' to them. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. At Peakirk-cum-Glinton, we set high expectations for all our children to take pride in their work and have a fluent, cursive handwriting style alongside allowing their imaginations to flourish.
Writing lessons
Children strive to become 'spicy writers' and are rewarded with golden tickets in their books which they exchange for a golden book. They are also awarded pencil toppers for demonstrating our writing non-negotiables.
In the model stage, children will look at good and bad examples of the genre, analysing and listing the key features, why authors choose the vocabulary and sentence structures that they do and what makes them effective. Adults and even peers may model their writing process and chidren can magpie and include ideas from the model, or their own wider reading.
In this phase, children will consider the intent of their wriitng - is it what they wanted? Does it create the mood, scene or character on the page as it did in their mind? Do they want to alter their plan or go in another direction? When they read it back with prosidy, are they happy with the sound and are the word choices, length of sentences and grammatical structures used to the best effect?
In the final stage children will peer, self edit or take adult suggestions to make the final edits to their work. They may 'purple pen' their edits and improvements. Sometimes a final, neat copy may be produced for sharing - especially if there was an intended audience!