Pathways to Write
At Bidston Village CE Primary School, we follow The Literacy Company’s ‘Pathways to Write’ from EYFS to Year 6. Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.
An Overview of Pathways to Write
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Pathways to Write is designed to equip pupils with key skills to move them through the writing process towards their final outcome. It is built around units of work that follow a mastery approach to the teaching of writing. To support this approach, clear detailed lesson plans and resources are linked to a high-quality text. Pathways to Write ensures engaging and purposeful English lessons. The units can be used thematically to encourage a whole school approach to writing with the opportunity for topics to link across year groups.
Each unit covers a range of areas in the national curriculum:
Mastery of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation skills
Writing a range of genres across a year
Vocabulary development
Spoken language (Oracy) activities including drama and presentations
Opportunities for practising previously taught genres
Extended, independent pieces of writing
This process follows three stages:
The Gateway
Begin at the Gateway with a ‘hook’ session to intrigue and enthuse young writers
Use objects, people, images or role-play to stimulate questions about the chosen text
Give pupils the opportunity to predict the text
Establish the purpose and audience of the writing
Revisit previous mastery skills and ongoing skills
The Pathway
Introduce pupils to new writing skills from their year group curriculum
Provide opportunities to practise and apply the skill they have learnt through short and extended writing tasks including character descriptions, poetry, dialogue between characters, fact files or diary entries in role
Provide opportunities to re-cap and apply previously taught skills
Challenge greater depth writers through a wider range of tasks
Writeaway
Section and sequence texts independently or collaboratively
Create extended pieces of writing over time
Opportunity to apply mastery skills
Time for planning, writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing
A fiction or non-fiction outcome (covering a wide range of genres and themes over the year)
The following information fits entirely with our whole school approach to writing.
American literary expert, Berninger illustrated the process with ‘The Simple View of Writing’. Here, he highlights three overarching processes that are essential to writing:
The model places working memory in the centre, emphasising how it plays a role in enabling each of these skills to operate. As we all know, when our brains are full, it becomes difficult to remember everything. To cope, our brains bring to the fore the information we need and other things are lost.
The EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) have produced guidance reports for improving Literacy at Key Stage 1 and 2 and make several recommendations to support this process for all our pupils-including those that are struggling.
Activities to support oracy (Voice 21)
When we start a new text with pupils, we consider how we are going to hook them into learning and engage them with the theme. The more engaged they are with the text and the better they understand the context, the easier they are going to find writing about it.
Base their writing around this theme, developing background knowledge and understanding
Use drama, role-play and spoken language activities to support pupils in considering the audience and purpose for their writing
Plan in paired and group discussions linked to the writing tasks
Encourage oral rehearsal of their writing from plans
Vocabulary development
Consider the vocabulary and background knowledge pupils need when accessing a new text.
Include an introduction to the setting of the text and pre-teach vocabulary the pupil may struggle to understand (Pupils have access to a vocabulary list linked to the book and their national curriculum stage).
Use a range of strategies to support the words found during the reading session.
Choose tier 2 words within the context of your topic/story e.g. succeeded, untangled. Introduce these words giving clear meaning of the new words in the context of the story. Model meaning in different contexts and throughout the day. Pupils give examples after teacher modelling. Pupils are able to use these words in their own writing.
Identifying audience and purpose for writing
Pathways to Write ensures that pupils know exactly who they are writing for and how their audience will use the information. They make the audience and purpose as real as possible.
Modelling the five stages of writing
Within the EEF report there is clear guidance on modelling the five stages of writing:
planning
drafting
revising
editing
publishing
As part of our continuing staff development, we will be revisiting these five stages of writing when using our pathways units.
Our ethos is to establish a gradual release of responsibility so that pupils see teachers modelling the process of writing. Then become a scribe for their ideas, showing how to select from a pool of options. From here, we encourage pupils to ‘have a go’ at constructing a sentence themselves. Once this process is complete, pupils should feel more confident at continuing to write independently.
Develop effective transcription skills
A good spelling programme gradually builds pupils’ spelling vocabulary by introducing patterns or conventions and continually practising those already introduced. Short, lively, focused sessions are more enjoyable and effective than an occasional skills session.
We follow the Read Write Inc Spelling Program which leads on from Read, Write Inc Phonics. After completing baselines assessments, we group our pupils for the stage that they are working at rather than their age. The programme is a balanced curriculum and focuses on:
Developing children’s phonemic and morphological knowledge - ie. the principles underpinning word construction.
Applying this knowledge to words they use when writing.
Having opportunities to practise and be assessed.
Becoming more confident with strategies – re-reading to check.
Gaining positive image of themselves as spellers.
Practising sentence construction
Practising sentence construction helps pupils to orally and physically rehearse sentences an evaluate and improve sentences before writing. Pathways to Write helps children acquire skills. Teachers relate to class text so that it links with classwork and the children are hearing the language, saying it, seeing it, reading it and ultimately, writing it.
Below you can find an overview of skills that will be covered in each year group for reading, writing and spoken language. Also included is an overview of the texts used in Pathways to Write.
Progression document in Mastery Years 1 to 6
Pathways to Write overview years 1-6
