Our Text Driver Approach to Writing  

Early Years 

In Nursery and Reception, all children enjoy teacher-led ‘Drawing Club’ sessions.

In Nursery this builds from one to two sessions a week and in Reception there are 3 sessions per week. https://www.canigoandplaynow.com/drawing-club.html 

Within these sessions, children explore a new quality text each week. Through this text children talk, build vocabulary, mark make and write. Children use their creativity and imagination by extending this learning through high quality continuous provision. 

Building on the Drawing Club approach, the transition to Year 1 is supported through the ‘Curious Quests’ approach in 4 sessions per week. https://www.canigoandplaynow.com/the-curious-quests.html.  

Through high quality continuous provision, whole class teaching and small group work, children complete a quest each week.  The children become immersed in a quality text, build vocabulary, apply their growing phonics knowledge and learn the Year 1 spelling, punctuation and grammar rules when writing each day. 

 

Key Stages 1 and 2 

English writing units are delivered through a carefully sequenced, text-driver approach in which a rich text drives the writing journey. Spoken language, reading, writing and grammar opportunities are planned intentionally to enable children to be successful in the final writing outcome.  Progression of text, sentence level and word level are carefully sequenced to allow children to build on prior learning and develop the transcription skills they need to write fluently. Throughout the year, children produce writing for a range of purposes, forms and audiences. 

• In the first stage, children engage in the text in the 'Stimulate and Generate' phase, in which they are hooked into the text and context, inspiring purposeful talk, opportunities to read, and build vocabulary.  

• In the second stage, 'Capture, Sift, and Sort,' children learn from the author’s style and literary techniques. They learn and explore grammatical techniques and their effect on the reader. They practise and experiment with these at a sentence and paragraph level during their ‘Apprentice Writes’.   

• In the final stage of the journey, 'Create, Refine, and Evaluate,' pupils will apply the skills they have been learning when working on their outcome. The writing process is prioritised, where children are taught to edit and refine their own and others' writing.   

At an appropriate opportunity in the ‘Text Driver’ journey, a ‘Site of Application Write’ presents the children with the opportunity to apply and retrieve previously taught skills and writing forms to a new context. 

 

Writing Portfolios 

• Each child at Bel Royal has a Writing Portfolio book. This book travels with each child throughout their journey at Bel Royal from Nursery to Year 6 to track and celebrate their writing progress. Writing in their portfolio is ‘unaided’ to carefully monitor and assess each child’s unique journey.