St Michael's Academy

We aim to enable our children to:

• Be enthusiastic creative thinkers.
• Write a range of text types through quality experiences and hooks that will enhance their knowledge and skills.
• Write with fluency and understanding by ensuring the teaching of phonics, grammar and spelling is embedded in context.
• Increase ability to use a range of strategies to edit and improve writing through the use of self- and peer-assessment.

We strive to offer a creative and motivating way to learn through engaging, interconnected topics. Our writing is driven from themes throughout the year ranging from our PRIDE weeks, global events and of course, plenty of cross curricular links within Geography, History and Science.

Year 3 poems about the oceans that linked with our core value of respect, and Year 6 autobiographies that linked with our core value of positivity

Year 6 - informative leaflets on Fairtrade.  

At the start of every new unit, we show our children a quality text to inspire young minds. We know that children who explore and hear a range of high-quality texts are better able to reflect on how writing devices affect the reader. Plenty of time is spent looking at key features, class discussions, planning, modelling, shared and independent writing along with editing and improving.  

We use the Writing Rainbow as a tool for thinking, talking and writing, by looking at the ideas of writing, the grammar of writing and the techniques of writing.  

Providing structured writing opportunities allows children to understand how the writing process works, but we believe it is equally important to allow children to use and apply their learning by giving them time and space to write freely for their own purpose and pleasure. 

All classes have a writing working wall which is kept up to date with the daily learning. Resources such as word packs are available for the children to use throughout the day. A language-rich environment is created by focusing on enriching vocabulary, understanding what words mean and how and why they are used. Word walls display key vocabulary unpicked by the children through discussions in any subject.

We also like to celebrate our children’s writing around school and we do this through our Star Writers board where work is displayed and changed every half term. As a school we take part in the Somerset Literacy Network competition, the BBC 500-word challenge and have a poetry week. We have a newspaper club where several children meet every fortnight to write a newspaper for their peers. Several children across the school have had the opportunity to attend Able Writers’ days and collaboratively work with other schools in Yeovil.   

We feel it is important to support children to develop legible, neat and consistent handwriting right from year 3. We encourage our children to ‘Match or Better’ their work. We appreciate that some children find this more difficult than others and will offer additional support or alternative ways of recording when necessary.  

How is spelling taught?  
Spelling matters. We use a range of fun, investigative and interactive methods to teach new weekly spelling patterns and rules. Each class also carries out 5 a day spellings where their class teacher chooses five words from year group statutory spellings.   

We encourage our learners to apply knowledge they have been taught when writing independently, by referring to their learning environment, and develop curiosity about language and words with class discussions. We strongly believe in a ‘have a go’ ethos – seeing spelling as problem solving. All staff model the process on how to spell, and use a range of strategies to suit all needs. This way children can use personal strategies to help them work out a solution to spell words they don’t know.  

Our approach to teaching spelling: 

• Revisiting previous learning 
• Teach, model, define  
• Practise, explore, investigate 
• Apply, assess, reflect 

Spelling Shed: 
At St Michael’s we use Spelling Shed, an online platform, which is designed to make spelling fun and engaging for our children. We are able to provide games that match with the rules being taught in the classroom. All year groups have access to the ICT suite, every week, to practise their weekly spelling rule and have the opportunity to take part in a whole-class Hive game, that allows all children to play alongside each other. Every fortnight we also hold class battles – it can get very competitive! Every term we also carry out spelling bees. Lower school and upper school get together separately to show off their learning.