Writing
Writing - The Whiteoak Way
‘Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.’
Pam Allyn
At the Whiteoak Academies, we know that children who are read to, and who read independently, have the opportunity to develop a rich vocabulary and an understanding of more sophisticated language structures. For this reason, reading is intrinsically linked to writing across the Whiteoak curriculum and the stimuli and models for writing are selected with great care.
Across our family of schools children are taught to write coherently, adapting their language and style for a variety of genres and, wherever possible, writing has a real purpose and audience. This motivates our children to produce beautiful work and to communicate their ideas with pride.
We acknowledge that writing is hard and that for many, learning in this area will need to be underpinned with opportunities to talk and shape ideas, internalise stories and examine the features of model texts. The study of spelling, punctuation and grammatical conventions in meaningful ways, helps our pupils to make their writing make sense and teaches them how to engage with and entertain their audience.
A progressive scheme for handwriting ensures that children develop the technical skills needed to write clearly, freeing the cognitive space for them to focus on the content of their work. Being able to proofread and edit are fundamental to our children making improvements in their own and others’ work and time is dedicated to the development of these skills throughout Key Stage 1 and 2.
