Writing
At Ivy Bank we embrace creativity and have developed our own bespoke, text based, thematic curriculum, which we believe inspires our children to become magical writers.
Fantastic texts such as 'The Snow Bear', 'The Queen's Knickers', 'The Perfect Hamburger', ‘Tumbleweed’, ‘Sky Hawk’ and ‘Street Child’ are always at the heart of our teaching. Our aim is that our children choose to write for pleasure and to encourage this we have writing tables in each classroom, which are stocked with exciting writing materials; Wow Writer Raffles to celebrate wonderful examples of creativity and presentation throughout the school, and provide the children with imaginative resources with which to present their writing. More than anything the children are inspired to write through the use of ‘writing hooks’ that engage and fuel their imaginations. For example, a U.F.O recently crashed into the school playground and incredibly, several large eggs were discovered in Year 1 alongside an escaped chicken embarking on her own adventure around the school grounds. Drama and poetry is also used to develop speech and language skills which in turn inspire writing.
Talk For Writing
Each term every class chooses a text, which may have been written by their teacher, to use for ‘Talk for Writing’. This approach was developed by Pie Corbett, who advises the Government, and thousands of schools across the country have adopted his methods. The aim is that the children learn the text by heart, with actions to support memory. The next stage, is the Innovation Stage where the children use the structure of the text to investigate spelling patterns, story structures and vocabulary choices. Finally, it is the Inventing Stage and the children create their own stories based on the structure of the original text, but with the added bonus of their own imaginations.
Handwriting
Ivy Bank encourages the children to have a sense of pride in the presentation of their work across the curriculum. Correct letter formation and handwriting joins are taught using the Penpals scheme, which has been endorsed by the National Handwriting Association. Our school handwriting style encourages breaks in joining, therefore we don’t join ‘g,j,y, x and z’
Recommended Resources
Use the active-learn website to access grammar and punctuation actvities set for your child by their teacher. The teacher receives information about your child's performance in the activities. The children earn tokens to spend on the fun games and activities on the website.
https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/login?c=0
Espresso is full of resources to help your child with their writing. www.home.espresso.co.uk. UN= student6994 PW= flyer15
The links below take you to some fantastic sections of the website:
KS1
Letter formation
http://central.espresso.co.uk/espresso/modules/ey_handwriting/index.html
Word Formation -CVC Words
http://central.espresso.co.uk/espresso/modules/ey_word_machine/index.html
KS2
Grammar Resources
