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Writing

Our vision for writing is that children leave Franche secondary ready, writing coherently and establishing strong identities as writers.

Writing lessons are taught through the use of high-quality texts. All writing at Franche is for a purpose and is at the core of each of our cross-curricular topics. We find this not only motivates pupils but also gives them a recognisable audience and this leads to higher standards of work. This purpose might be to persuade (letter writing to request resources as part of a fundraising project for the local foodbank), to inform (creating leaflets to persuade people to save water) or to entertain by creating a poem or storybook (for an audience of children or adults within the community). At Franche we are passionate about developing fluent transcription skills as well as exploring the composition of the children’s writing.

Franche Primary Writing Policy
Franche Writing Curriculum Design
Franche Writing Teaching and Learning Cycle Overview
Franche Grammar and Punctuation Progression Overview
SMSC in English
Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS)

PALS has been implemented across the school as a purposeful tool for editing. The PALS session takes places after a Franche Write (independent writing) has been completed and allows the children time to assess their peers work through coach marking and target setting. This helps pupils to;

  • Provide focused feedback
  • Become more engaged in learning and develop their interpersonal skills
  • Understand the learning objective and success criteria
  • Know their individual targets
  • Have a clear understanding of how, and what, to edit

Following the coach marking and target setting process, the children then edit their own work leading to greater outcomes.

Watch the videos below to see PALS in action at Franche in Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
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PALS Crib Sheet Key Stage One
PALS Crib Sheet Key Stage Two
Handwriting

At Franche we recognise that handwriting is an important skill and children’s ability to write fluently for the rest of their lives depends on a good foundation of taught handwriting in the early years of their education. A flexible, fluent and legible handwriting style empowers children to write with confidence and creativity. At Franche, the handwriting journey starts in Nursery and is continued all the way through to Year 6 where the children leave with a fluent, natural and personal style of handwriting.
From Reception to Year 6, handwriting is taught through our Transcription Time lessons. We believe that handwriting is a developmental process with its own distinctive stages of progression from readiness for handwriting, through to letter joins, practicing speed and fluency and higher presentation skills. Take a look at our 'Letter Joins' document to see how we join different letters. 
 
Franche Primary handwriting joining letter sets
Handwriting Heroes 
Have you seen any superheroes flying around school recently? These children are formally known as our Handwriting Heroes! Throughout each day, children from across the school are chosen to be a Handwriting Hero so everyone can celebrate their success with them. Handwriting Heroes can be chosen for a variety of reasons and it's always individual to each child's own personal targets. Maybe they’ve struggled to form the letter ‘a’ correctly and have finally succeeded, maybe they find joining letters really challenging but have cracked it or it could be that they have really worked on their handwriting during Transcription Time or their Franche Write. So, if you're nearby and see some superheroes whizzing around the playground, you know some fantastic handwriting is happening at Franche! 
 

Transcription Time

 

 Transcription time has been created as a new element to our spelling lessons. It is at the heart of writing as it enables the children to develop fluency when transcribing – this could include transcribing graphemes, words or key topic vocabulary dependent on the individual child.

Once they have developed this fluency in forming letters and words, children are able to free up their working memory to focus on composing and then reviewing their writing (spelling, sentence structure and maybe adding a little creativity). Not only does transcription time develop children’s fluency in writing but it also supports their automaticity, accuracy, natural handwriting style and their self-confidence.

We begin ‘transcription time’ sessions in Reception to embed these natural writing styles from the very start of their writing journey. Take a look at our ‘Transcription Time Overview’ to see what each year band focuses on during these sessions!

Franche Transcription Time Overview
Spelling
 
Spelling is vital to communicating in school and in public life. The ability to write clearly and with accurate spelling is a very important skill that children need to acquire and, as such, it is important to help and encourage children to develop as confident, competent spellers. At Franche Community Primary School, it is our aim to promote the development of confident writers, who can use their spelling skills competently in all areas of the curriculum. We have high expectations for accurate spelling, challenging children to achieve ‘POPS’ (Paragraph of Perfect Spelling) in KS2 and ‘SOPS’ (Sentence of Perfect Spelling) in KS1 and earning themselves Class Dojo points if they achieve it.
 
At Franche, we believe that spelling needs to be explicitly taught to the children. We use a wide range of engaging approaches to help pupils learn new spellings during their spelling lessons each week. Click the button below to see some of the strategies that we use. We also want to equip the children with strategies to allow them to attempt unknown spellings and for them to have the tools to overcome this barrier in their writing. We teach the children to use the BOSH strategies, which you can see by clicking the button below. As teachers, we refer to the BOSH strategies during guided writing groups to model this to the children and encourage them to do the same during independent pieces of writing (Franche Writes). The children have their own ‘Spoodle’ books to use during spelling lessons to combine mindfulness doodling with having the opportunity to try out the different spelling strategies to spot patterns and make the words more memorable. They can also use this book during their writing lessons as a place to ‘Have a go!’ at an unknown spelling or a spelling they are not quite sure of. They can then try writing this word in a variety of different ways to see if it looks right before writing it in their writing books.
 
Our Spelling strategies
BOSH spelling poster

At Franche, we feel it is important to promote the importance of spelling and as such, each half term, we invite parents and carers into school for a parent spelling workshop. This takes place in each class and gives parents the chance to work with their child on some of the spelling strategies that we use as well as signposting parents to the spelling word lists for each year band that we assess in school.

 

Click the buttons below to download the spelling lists for each year band:
Reception word list
Year 1 word list
Year 2 word list
Year 3 and 4 word list
Year 5 and 6 word list

As a school, we have purchased a subscription to a website called ‘Spelling Shed’. Each child across the school, has their own log in and they will have their weekly spellings set by their teachers. This will allow them to play various games to support them in learning these spellings in preparation for their weekly spelling test. As well as their weekly spellings being set, the children also have access to their year band spelling word list throughout the year to further support their spelling. Some children will be given differentiated spelling lists if they are not reading for the spelling lists for their year group. Don’t worry though as we will always ensure these are challenging but achievable. Click the Spelling Shed link about to start playing! 

To promote the use of Spelling Shed and to celebrate the hard work that the children are putting into learning their spellings on this platform, each week during assembly, the top class from Reception is awarded the Spelling Shed cuddly bee with the top scoring class from Years 1 – 3 and from Years 4 – 6 being awarded the Spelling Shed trophy.  Click here to access the Spelling Shed website.

Year 2 Little Wandle spelling programme 

At Franche, we follow the Little Wandle scheme to teach phonics. To follow on from this, in Year 2 we have also chosen to use the Little Wandle spelling programme. This ensures a consistent approach for the children as they continue their spelling journey. Just like the rest of the school, the children in Year 2 have spelling lessons each week and take part in different activities during these lessons; from dictated sentences, learning ‘prickly’ words, adding in the missing words to sentences and word building with suffixes.  

Every year, we celebrate the glory of being an accurate speller by holding a spelling bee day. Staff and pupils dress up and engage in a whole host of fun and engaging spelling activities. Pupils also get involved in creating new and exciting ways to help others to spell tricky words. During the day, each year band also holds their own spelling bee, where a group of children compete to become the Franche spelling bee champion. We even managed to rope in fitness guru Joe Wicks to help us promote spelling! 
Here are some of our YouTube videos from previous years:
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Click here to find out more about phonics at Franche!
Franche Primary letter formation
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