We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all mixed age groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.

The units have been designed to aid and guide progression, as well as the tracking of skills throughout each year group. The mastery approach teaches children to master the skills of writing by focusing on particular techniques throughout a unit of work. As a result, the children are given many opportunities to practise and apply these skills until they have mastered them. As they become more confident, children are taught to write in different contexts, for different purposes and to apply language rules and traditions for effect.

Each Pathways unit journeys to a final extended writing outcome where the children’s success relies on their application of the mastery keys. However, contained in the journey are many ‘short burst’ writing opportunities, where the children can explore a wide variety of genres and practise specific mastery skills through shared, guided and independent writing.

Children are expected to apply their writing skills and knowledge in cross curricular lessons; teachers provide extended writing opportunities to ensure children can write for sustained periods of time and at length. During all writing activities, high expectations and standards of writing in terms of composition, word selection, spelling and punctuation are expected.

Writing is teacher assessed against year group expectations and a forensic writing assessment framework. Writing is moderated internally, and benchmarked against examples from other schools.

Writing teaching and learning is monitored on a termly basis through learning walks, pupil observations, discussions of work within school books, data analysis and progress meetings.

You will find the end of year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.

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An Overview of Pathways to Write

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Pathways to Write

Introduction

Pathways to Write is designed to equip pupils with key skills to move them through the writing process towards their final outcome. It is built around units of work that follow a mastery approach to the teaching of writing. To support this approach, clear detailed lesson plans and resources are linked to a high-quality text. Pathways to Write ensures engaging and purposeful English lessons. The units can be used thematically to encourage a whole school approach to writing with the opportunity for topics to link across year groups.

Each unit covers a range of areas in the national curriculum:

  • Mastery of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation skills
  • Writing a range of genres across a year
  • Vocabulary development
  • Spoken language (Oracy) activities including drama and presentations
  • Opportunities for practising previously taught genres
  • Extended, independent pieces of writing

The Process

The Gateway

  • Begin at the Gateway with a ‘hook’ session to intrigue and enthuse young writers

  • Use objects, people, images or role-play to stimulate questions about the chosen text

  • Give pupils the opportunity to predict the text

  • Establish the purpose and audience of the writing

  • Revisit previous mastery skills and ongoing skills

The Pathway

  • Introduce pupils to new writing skills from their year group curriculum

  • Provide opportunities to practise and apply the skill they have learnt through short and extended writing tasks including character descriptions, poetry, dialogue between characters, fact files or diary entries in role

  • Provide opportunities to re-cap and apply previously taught skills

  • Challenge greater depth writers through a wider range of tasks

Writeaway

  • Section and sequence texts independently or collaboratively

  • Create extended pieces of writing over time

  • Opportunity to apply mastery skills

  • Time for planning, writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing

  • A fiction or non-fiction outcome (covering a wide range of genres and themes over the year)

Whole School Approach

American literary expert, Berninger illustrated the process with ‘The Simple View of Writing’. In the model image on the left, he highlights three overarching processes that are essential to writing.

The model places working memory in the centre, emphasising how it plays a role in enabling each of these skills to operate. As we all know, when our brains are full, it becomes difficult to remember everything. To cope, our brains bring to the fore the information we need and other things are lost.

The EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) have produced guidance reports for improving Literacy at Key Stage 1 and 2 and make several recommendations to support this process for all our pupils-including those that are struggling.

Activities to Support Oracy

  • When we start a new text with pupils, we consider how we are going to hook them into learning and engage them with the theme. The more engaged they are with the text and the better they understand the context, the easier they are going to find writing about it.

  • Base their writing around this theme, developing background knowledge and understanding

  • Use drama, role-play and spoken language activities to support pupils in considering the audience and purpose for their writing

  • Plan in paired and group discussions linked to the writing tasks

  • Encourage oral rehearsal of their writing from plans

Vocabulary Development

  • Consider the vocabulary and background knowledge pupils need when accessing a new text.

  • Include an introduction to the setting of the text and pre-teach vocabulary the pupil may struggle to understand (Pupils have access to a vocabulary list linked to the book and their national curriculum stage).

  • Use a range of strategies to support the words found during the reading session.

  • Choose tier 2 words within the context of your topic/story e.g. succeeded, untangled. Introduce these words giving clear meaning of the new words in the context of the story. Model meaning in different contexts and throughout the day. Pupils give examples after teacher modelling. Pupils are able to use these words in their own writing.

Identifying Audience and Purpose for Writing

Pathways to Write ensures that pupils know exactly who they are writing for and how their audience will use the information. They make the audience and purpose as real as possible.

Modelling the 5 Stage of Writing

Within the EEF report there is clear guidance on modelling the five stages of writing:

  • planning

  • drafting

  • revising

  • editing

  • publishing

As part of our continuing staff development, we will be revisiting these five stages of writing when using our pathways units.

Our ethos is to establish a gradual release of responsibility so that pupils see teachers modelling the process of writing. Then become a scribe for their ideas, showing how to select from a pool of options. From here, we encourage pupils to ‘have a go’ at constructing a sentence themselves. Once this process is complete, pupils should feel more confident at continuing to write independently.

Develop Effective Transcription Skills

A good spelling programme gradually builds pupils’ spelling vocabulary by introducing patterns or conventions and continually practising those already introduced. Short, lively, focused sessions are more enjoyable and effective than an occasional skills session.

We follow the Read Write Inc Spelling Program which leads on from Read, Write Inc Phonics. After completing baselines assessments, we group our pupils for the stage that they are working at rather than their age. The programme is a balanced curriculum and focuses on:

  1. Developing children’s phonemic and morphological knowledge – ie. the principles underpinning word construction.

  2. Applying this knowledge to words they use when writing.

  3. Having opportunities to practise and be assessed.

  4. Becoming more confident with strategies – re-reading to check.

  5. Gaining positive image of themselves as spellers.

Practicing Sentence Construction

Practising sentence construction helps pupils to orally and physically rehearse sentences an evaluate and improve sentences before writing. Pathways to Write helps children acquire skills. Teachers relate to class text so that it links with classwork and the children are hearing the language, saying it, seeing it, reading it and ultimately, writing it.

Below you can find an overview of skills that will be covered in each year group for reading, writing and spoken language. Also included is an overview of the texts used in Pathways to Write.

Reading
Alongside reading great works in the English canon and Classics, we make use of the RIVERS approach to develop reading skills, which include:

R

Retrieve

I

Infer

V

Vocabulary

E

Explain

R

Reimagine

S

Summarise

These are considered the core skills of reading and link specifically to the National Curriculum reading domains. Teachers will ensure children have a balance of skills across the week and over each term so that they have opportunities to develop their complete reading skills.

We encourage reading for pleasure through children having a choice of challenging and enriching texts as well as building in time for children to read independently and as part of a whole class. All children have daily opportunities to read a variety of material in school, including regularly with an adult.

During our Read Aloud breaks, our children listen to a text being read to them for pleasure. This happens everyday as another opportunity to hear expert reading.

Our intended impact is that children will leave Key Stage 2 as competent readers with a shared love of stories and a secure understanding of what they have read. Pupils will be able to engage in discussions about plots and characters, recommend a book to a peer and evaluate an author’s use of language and the impact this has on the reader. Pupils will read in all subjects in the curriculum and will read different genres to develop their understanding about a topic.

Spelling

We use Pathways to Spell which covers the National Curriculum Objectives for teaching GPS by introducing patterns, conventions and continually practising those already introduced.

Pathways to Spell is an innovative and engaging programme to fascinate pupils about words. It is a research-based series of lessons following a Review, Explain, Practise, Apply and Reflect model. Through this programme, we aim to develop a school of spellers who use a series of strategies in lessons and in their independent writing. There is a cycle of reviewing objectives, covering the whole curriculum, to ensure gaps in learning are constantly revisited.

Key elements of Pathways to Spell:

  • Covers the whole national curriculum
  • Pedagogically sound and evidence-based
  • Multi-sensory approach
  • Builds phonemic, orthographic and etymological knowledge
  • Develops a range of independent spelling strategies to apply beyond spelling lessons
  • Regular opportunities to edit and improve work are provided.

The children are taught to and expected to proof read their work to improve spelling, punctuation and grammar. They add, omit and change words to improve the content.

Year Group Objectives – Spelling

Please find useful links below

Curriculum Overview
Curriculum Overview
Reading and Spoken Language Overview
Reading and Spoken Language Overview

Should you have any questions about the curriculum, please contact Mr Joseph via info@thelight-school.org

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