How one school is rewriting their writing…

5 September, 2024 —
Blog

How one school is rewriting their writing curriculum

A leadership case study.

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by Research Schools Network
on the 5th September 2024

Helen Crowther, Principal of Greetland Academy and Executive Principal for Great Heights Academy Trust, offers a leadership case study of one school’s journey to develop their writing curriculum.

A familiar scenario?

How often do we engage in ‘brave conversations’ in schools and consider whether our teaching is giving children the building blocks they need for success? Listening to the frustration of teachers and acknowledging their experiences of teaching writing was the beginning of engaging everyone in a collaborative process to develop our approach to writing.

Exploring existing practice

We always saw ourselves as research informed: with a curriculum and writing cycle linked to the EEF’s literacy guidance reports, yet still we had some children whose writing was just not getting better. It wasn’t until our leadership team had to provide evidence for an upcoming OFSTED report around early years and Key Stage 1, that we took the much needed ‘brave’ approach to our English teaching.

During this process, we engaged in a truly challenging yet professional conversation and reflection about what children really need to be successful writers and what building blocks need to be mastered first before moving on to more complex tasks. Like all schools, we were feeling the pressure of what felt like an overloaded curriculum. These contextual factors were influencing current practice and were having an impact on how we were addressing pupil needs.

A time for change

Within a staff meeting we reviewed the ‘Simple View of Writing’, a model that places working memory in the centre.

When we reviewed our expectations of children in early years and Key Stage 1, it became clear that the working memory of our young writers was becoming overloaded. They were being asked to think about composition before they had developed the requisite automaticity with transcription, including accurate letter formation.

In reading it’s widely acknowledged that we only ask children to read books containing the sounds they know, so why would we ask them to write sentences and even words, when they cannot form the letters?

As part of the process of exploration, we thought carefully about our current practices. We were already using dictation in our writing lessons but purely based on the sounds our children knew through phonics, not whether they could correctly form the letters.

Preparing for change

We made the decision to amend our Reception and Year 1 writing curriculum to focus on the explicit teaching of handwriting. This isn’t to say that composition has been completely relegated, instead we place emphasis on planned opportunities for oral composition. There’s not a diary entry or non-chronological report in sight in our English books!

It was important that we united all staff around the need for change and the core components of the writing approach in the early years and Key Stage 1 as this had implications for all. When we sat with staff to change our approach, they were relieved. We also discussed the importance of uniting parents around our new approach as we wanted them to understand our rationale and why books would look different.

We recognised the importance of systems and structures that would support effective implementation. As a leadership team we created a handwriting continuum and diagnostic assessments and gave our teachers the freedom to stop teaching complex writing tasks when the children were not actually ready for this. As part of the process of preparation, we dedicated more meeting time to explore effective writing pedagogies providing opportunities for staff to practise delivery using a shared language. Indeed, the EEF’s recent practice review of writing identified that there is an appetite among teachers for more writing professional development, as this is often an area where there is more minimal coverage during teacher education programmes.

Where are we now?

The results have been clear to see but hard to capture. If you look at the children’s writing, yes it looks neater, but what is palpable to see is when we dictate to our children, they are not having to think consciously about what they need to do: they are not fighting to produce their work. Much like with decodable books that provide children with success, with these dictation activities we are seeing children become more automatic and fluent in their letter formation.