WRITING AT GOLDSTONE
Writing at Goldstone
At Goldstone we intend to instil in our children the enjoyment of writing and speaking and listening so that they can develop into confident and independent communicators. We understand the importance of providing engaging stimuli in a wide variety of genres where children can develop their own writing style within different contexts. We also know that developing curiosity about the literary world around them is key to broadening our children’s breadth of vocabulary.
Curriculum
At Goldstone, we believe that children develop a secure knowledge of English by following a clear pathway of progression in the acquisition of skills and knowledge, as they advance through the school. Emphasising the important and close relationship between reading and writing is key to our pedagogy at Goldstone. We use high quality literature to engage children in their literacy topics. We have a particular focus on ensuring that this literature reflects the diversity of our school community. When a new topic is introduced through an exciting stimulus (picture book, video, newspaper article), it is unpicked by the children to understand the composition of the writing including the vocabulary choices, use of grammar, variety of punctuation and presentation. Through the rest of the unit, parts of these key features from a text are practised and applied through their own piece of writing.
Our school’s literacy topic overview can be viewed in the document below. Here you will find the different text-types that each year group will be studying throughout the year.
Editing
Editing is an integral part of the writing process and we are proud to have fantastic editors from Reception to Year 6 in our school. The children understand that writing is a first draft and can always be improved by making changes to their vocabulary choices, use of grammar and gives them the chance to appreciate their writing when they revisit it. Editing helps to develop independence and helps them to gain knowledge and strategies of how they can improve their own writing.
Spelling
Spelling is an important part of our curriculum throughout the school. Learning common exception words and spelling patterns starts in key stage 1 alongside learning phonics. In Year 2 and Key Stage 2, the No Nonsense Spelling scheme is used. This provides us with a progression and coverage of the spelling patterns, exceptions to the spelling rules and common exception words that are required by the Spelling Appendix in the National Curriculum.
Regular practice is key to learning and remembering new spellings and patterns, practising with your child at home helps with this recall. For more information about spelling and how best to support your child at home, please visit the Spelling page on our website.
Handwriting
At Goldstone, we use the Letter Join programme that enables us to follow a coherent and clear progression of handwriting from forming letters to cursive handwriting that begins in Year 3.
For more information about our curriculum, please see our English policy below.
Best presentation awards at Goldstone
At Goldstone, we want our children to develop a sense of pride in their writing where they will use neat handwriting and presentation to present their thoughts, imagined stories, learning and understanding across the curriculum.
This year, our English Co-ordinators, Mrs Barrett-Allen and Miss Lewis, have been delighted and impressed with the high standard that our children are writing at and presenting their writing in English lessons. In order to celebrate these wonderful achievements, they designed a 'Best Presentation Award' to celebrate the specific children that have been taking extra care in their presentation by: demonstrating high expectations of themselves in their own presentation; showing pride in their writing; and demonstrating a brilliant effort in their hand-writing. In the celebration assembly, these children's pieces of writing were shared with their peers and they were handed their awards.
Congratulations to our winners in 2022-23 - you can see some of their beautiful writing pictured below. We look forward to seeing who will receive these awards next school year!
Poetry Competition News
During the first half of spring term, Key Stage 2 have thrown themselves into becoming eco-poets by taking part in the Big Green Poetry Competition. It was so exciting to see so many children motivated to write about the world around them and the passion that they have to want to make a difference to our natural world. Out of the 28 poems that were submitted to the competition, these 6 poems stood out to Miss Lewis who was incredibly impressed and proud of the talent that these eco-poets showed. Congratulations to everyone who took part and to the special 6 whose poems you can read below.
UPDATE...We are very proud to say that 31 of our children's poems made it into the final published edition of 'The BIG green poetry machine - A poetry odyssey'
