At Dunbury we approach writing through the ‘simple view of writing’ designed by researchers into best practice.  We recognise that despite the title of the simple view of writing, writing is a complex and increasingly demanding task as children progress from novice to expert to disciplinary writers.  Below are our key concepts in writing.

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At Dunbury we believe that for children to be successful writers they need strong accurate and fluent foundations in spelling and handwriting.  We follow the Read, Write Inc. SSP programme, which provides the basis for strong teaching of phonics and letter formation in Early Years and early Key Stage 1.  This grows into the progression model for transcription knowledge across the school.

Spelling

In EY and Year 1, children learn to encode words using Fred Fingers. Click here for an information film about how to support your child at home with this. 

Beyond the RWI programme, children continue to apply phonics as their main strategy whilst developing their awareness of alternative spellings, etymology (where words originate from) and morphology (how words are structured, such as adding prefixes and suffixes).  

Handwriting

It is important that our children learn to write the letters as they learn the sounds. Read Write Inc suggest mnemonics (short rhymes) to help children form letters correctly when they are early readers, which gives them the foundations to develop a joined style when they move into Key Stage 2.

Click here for a parent information film on supporting your child at home.

Composition:

At Dunbury, we recognise that to compose our writing successfully we need an increasing knowledge of vocabulary, language, grammar and its effects, sentence structures and audiences to write for (genres).  The substantive knowledge that we teach is ambitious, informed by the national curriculum and organised into key concepts. 

Executive Function:

Executive function is our ability to self-regulate through writing tasks, allowing us to plan, sustain our attention and stick to our learning goals.  At Dunbury, we use metacognitive questioning throughout our writing lessons to support pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their approaches, supporting both their executive function and their self-regulation. We also include here in our thinking, motivation to write. Children need to pursue writing excellence in the context of having all the necessary building blocks to write well. We believe that all children can write.