Writing | Coates Way School

Jane Considine Writing Approach

Implementation

At Coates Way School we have adopted ‘The Write Stuff’ by Jane Considine to bring clarity and consistency to the mechanics of writing and to enable our children to write effectively and coherently. As a school, all children from Year 1 to Year 6 learn to write through the Write Stuff approach. This was developed by teachers and leading English consultant, Jane Considine. It is a fun, creative and rigorous approach to develop children’s writing. This approach allows children to apply basic skills, vocabulary and grammar knowledge to write effective sentences, which are full of impact and keep the reader interested.

In The Write Stuff approach to writing, the children explore high level, rich vocabulary and are taught grammar in context through different writing lenses on the Writing Rainbow. There are three lenses used to support children with their writing:

Fantastics – ideas for writing
Grammaristics – tools for writing
Boomtastics – writing techniques

The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons.

As part of the teaching sequence, teachers plan experience days; sentence stacking lessons and independent writing sequences. Experience days immerse children in experiences linked to their writing and drench them in vocabulary linked to the lenses in ‘The Writing Rainbow’. From the experience days, children take part in the sentence stacking lessons. Sentence stacking lessons focus on writing three sentences with focuses on lenses of the rainbow.

‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.

An individual lesson is based on one plot point from the text, broken in to three learning chunks:

1. Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
2. Model section – the teacher models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
3. Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the teacher’s model.

This part of the unit is heavily scaffolded with lots of teacher input and modelling of vocabulary use, sentence construction and use of grammar with reference to the 3 writing lenses.

During the initiate section children ‘chot’ (chat and jot) down their ideas from stimulating resources, such as pictures, music and drama. The children are encouraged to use ‘kind calling out’ where they call out examples of vocabulary, adverbs, onomatopoeia etc.

During the Model section the teacher prepares children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar and techniques of writing taken from the writing rainbow.
In the Enable section pupils write their own sentences, taking the opportunity to deepen the moment. ‘Deepen the Moment’ is where children are challenged to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.
Following the sentence stacking, children are given the opportunity to show what they have learnt by planning and writing their own independent piece of writing. After they have written their independent piece, their work is marked by the class teacher who identifies different aspects of their written piece to be edited.

Impact

Having followed the Write Stuff approach to developing their writing skills children should be able to

write for a range of purposes including diary entries, persuasive letters, stories, poems and recounts to name but a few.
use their vast knowledge of vocabulary to excite, inform or entertain the reader.
understand a range of punctuation and the effect it can have on the reader in both writing and reading.

understand and be able to use a range of grammatical devices.
understand the various sentence types that can be used to support different genres.
spell accurately using their phonetic knowledge and apply spelling rules.
to speak clearly, fluently and coherently, to be able to listen attentively with understanding, pleasure and empathy and contribute to group discussions

English Writing Units and Curriculum Coverage

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5 * Year 6 Still to come

In addition, assessments and SPaG booster sessions are supported with resources from HFL, NFER, Test Base and past SATs Papers.

Jane Considine Spelling Approach -KS2

At Coates Way School, we feel strongly about supporting children to be brave spellers. We understand the importance of children learning to spell correctly, but we also want to engage and inspire children with a love of words. This is why we have implemented the Jane Considine approach to spelling which puts the children's love of words at the heart of learning to spell. 

Lessons encourage children to look deeply at words, draw and build upon their knowledge of phonics from KS1 and make connections with spellings or letter patterns that they may already know.

Starting in KS2, the children will complete spellings on a two-week timetable. 

During Week 1, the children will have two sessions: one 30 minute session, one 20 minute session. The first session is the Investigation where the children explore proving or disproving a spelling hypothesis. The second session - Go Grapheme Grafters  - focuses on using phonics and their own learning to unpick words and come up with strategies to help. 

During Week 2, the children will have five 10-minute sessions that will work on children practising and applying spellings under time pressure to support their ability to spell more accurately in lessons and other real-life writing scenarios. 

This approach is about helping children make plausible spelling choices in their writing that make sense and, even if not correct, have phonetical reasoning at the heart of the letter choices being made.

EYFS and KS1

At Coates Way School we use FFT "Success for All" Phonics to teach phonics. This is used daily from the beginning of Reception, enabling children to make a smooth transition from Reception to Year 1. Year Two then move on to daily spellings which follow the FFT Jungle Club literacy programme. (Please See Phonics and Early Reading)