The Duchy School

Writing

Children have a daily lesson to develop their writing. This is grounded in a deep understanding of the purpose and audience of writing, the mechanics such as handwriting, spelling and grammar, together with developing authorial craft and writers’ flair.

Children develop their writing through the use of high quality model texts which exemplify core writing features. These texts provide an entitlement to great books which are mapped out to the National Curriculum in a progressive sequence, ensuring all children have the opportunity to be challenged appropriately.  We use the Literary Curriculum, a book-based approach created so that there is a more consistent, cohesive pedagogy used across the school.

Developed by The Literacy Tree,  the Literary Curriculum immerses children in a literary world, creating strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for learning. Children become critical readers and acquire an authorial style as they encounter a wide-range of significant authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Teachers use live modelling, where they act as an author to ensure that our children can think through their writing and the impact it has on an audience. Developing children’s vocabulary is a key element of our teaching and teachers develop children’s vocabulary for writing (termed tier 2 words) together with subject specific, technical language (tier 3 words). We teach spelling and grammar using a scheme which is closely aligned to the National Curriculum expectations.