3 Key Principles of Effective Learning at Stoke Primary 

Stoke understands the importance of lifelong learning skills for all our children to enable them the chance to fulfill their dreams.  To facilitate this, we have three key aspects of effective learning. 

• Widening Horizons 

Stoke Primary School recognises that children are better equipped to develop and apply their skills in writing when the learning is immersive and linked to other subjects, giving them a context and clear purpose.  It is also acknowledged that some writing skills are better suited to discrete teaching which can then be applied across the curriculum.  

This is facilitated by the following: 

• Contextualising learning with real experiences 
• Vocabulary-rich learning landscape
• Characteristics of Effective Learning

 These characteristics support effective learning in writing: 

Creating and Thinking Critically 

Children develop their own ideas and are able to choose a way to present their writing.  They develop their ability to ‘join the dots’, linking their writing to their learning in the wider curriculum. 

Stoke Primary School considers the Characteristics of Effective Learning, as defined in the EYFS, to be key components that lead to lifelong learning.  Stoke Primary School applies a progression of these throughout all year groups as a structure that underpins good learning.  The language and its application develop through school and our children learn to develop these characteristics throughout all their learning. 

• Skill Sequences 

• Immersive topics seek to strengthen the quality of writing by using foundation subjects to widen and contextualise vocabulary.  Topic plans support sequences that build to high quality literary outcomes 

• Discrete topics provide an opportunity to teach writing skills that require a specific foci 
   

• Weekly Planning

Teachers plan in year groups and then tailor plans and resources for each class’s attainment and development needs.  Teachers plan each writing unit with the independent pieces of writing at the heart of all learning. Teachers carefully plan SPaG lessons that are differentiated to support children in achieving their targets. Incidental pieces of writing are modelled in shared writing to allow the children to practice targets individually before applying them together for their final piece of writing.

Where monitoring identifies planning as insufficient for effective learning or has limited impact on pupil progress, support is provided by subject leaders with the use of established formats and guidance. 

• Writing Assessment  

• Assessment 

• Safeguarding and Inclusion 

• SEND Policy 

6 Research to support policy approach

“Language provides the foundation of thinking and learning and should be prioritised. High quality adult-child interactions are important and sometimes described as talking with children rather than just talking to children. Use a wide range of explicit and implicit approaches including planning the teaching of vocabulary, modelling and extending children’s language and thinking during interactions and activities such as shared reading. Collaborative activities that provide opportunities to learn/hear language often also provide opportunities for wider learning through talk. Skills such as social awareness, relationship skills and problem solving are developed, as well as knowledge” EEF

This is the fundamental, key part of the teaching of writing at Stoke. Children are given a range of opportunities to discuss and share ideas with their peers before the writing begins. They are encouraged to role play to develop their understanding of the text and key vocabulary but also to develop their imagination and build on prior knowledge.

“Children need to be introduced to, then practise, planning, drafting, revising, and editing with feedback from the teacher and from their peers. The aim is for them to increase the fluency of these skills and techniques so that they become automatic. The teacher should provide appropriate support that models the process of writing which is gradually reduced over time so the child is ultimately capable of completing the activity independently” EEF

The writing unit lasts the half term and focuses on a specific text/stimulus linked to their curriculum topic. A lot of time in the lessons is spent exploring the ideas within the stimulus in order for the children to plan, draft and write independently. Children are given focused targets that are explicitly taught and these need to be used within independent writing pieces. The revising and editing process focuses on these as well as the non-negotiables of writing set out at the beginning of the writing unit.

“Pupils also need to learn about text structure, and how texts in different genres are formed. Studies show young children benefit from explicit teaching about the structure of narrative and information texts. Providing pupils with models of simple structures for different types of text can support this. Modelling is also important as pupils progress from constructing simple sentences to being able to combine sentences with more complex grammatical structures. Teachers could model these processes, for example, by explicitly demonstrating how to combine several related, simple sentences to make more complex ones. Teachers should encourage pupils to do this on their own as they write ” EEF

Throughout the writing unit, the children will produce 2-3 different writing genres. These text structures are explicitly taught with use of the story mountains/boxing up for narratives and the Write Stuff non-fiction shapes. Before the children write independently, the class produce a shared write of the writing genre which models the structure, non-negotiables and targets the children need to achieve.

“Writing is a complex task because it requires pupils to coordinate a number of different processes at once. The Simple View of Writing” EEF

The same stimulus is used throughout a half term linked to the curriculum topic, supporting the children’s working memory as the vocabulary foci is repeated in a range of contexts. The children therefore build and develop their knowledge whilst building on their writing skills.