Writing

At Christleton Primary School, we teach writing following the Pathways to Write units of work. 

Pathways to Write is a proven methodology built around units of work which develop vocabulary, reading and writing skills through the mastery approach. The units, for use with pupils from EYFS to Y6, provide clear detailed lesson plans and resources, linked to high-quality texts to ensure engaging and purposeful English lessons. Effective teaching strategies to challenge greater depth writers are included and challenged within each unit of work.

The units of work ensure children cover the National Curriculum for English in its entirety for writing; and the progressive structure of the programme ensures children's learning develops through the introduction of new skills being taught and regular opportunities to revisit and develop existing skills.

Within Pathways to Write, planning and delivery of sessions uses the following sequence:

Gateway: This is an opportunity to hook the pupils into the context of learning and to assess previously taught mastery skills. A short writing task is set at the end of this session to assess the application of Gateway Skills (this is not attended to assess pupils on skills or genres that they have not been taught before). Where pupils are struggling to apply and use Gateway Keys, these are built into the planning of the unit to personalise and use for each class.

Pathway: In this section, the mastery skills are introduced with many opportunities along the way to practise and apply these skills in different writing tasks. The tasks use genres that the pupils will be most familiar with such as character or setting description, dialogue, diary entries, instructions, poetry and sentence work. This provides on-going evidence for writing assessment.

Writeaway: This final section of the sequence comprises of 4 sessions. It begins with sectioning and sequencing texts using a model. If the final outcome is narrative-based, this will usually be the text which has been read and for younger age groups, a shortened version to support re-telling will be included. If the outcome is a non-fiction text, then a model will be available to support. Within the Writeaway, children are encouraged to plan, write, check, edit, redraft and publish as required with the focus on applying the mastery skills that they have been taught.

Gateway, Mastery and Feature Keys:

The keys are listed at the start of each Pathways to Write unit:                                                    

Gateway Keys: are the keys that should be have previously taught (retrieval/review).

Mastery Keys: are the main skills that will be focused on throughout the unit.

Feature Keys:  are the features of the writing genre for the outcome for each unit. Each set of feature keys has the same structure – vocabulary of the genre, how sentences and tenses are used and the overall structure of each one.