English

The Porthleven Way of Writing

Talk with passion. Create with purpose. Write with precision.

We present a holistic approach to nurturing young writers, fostering not just technical proficiency but a genuine love for language and expression. At its core, it’s about empowering students to wield words with passion, purpose and precision.

Through careful modelling and effective discussion, children are inspired to express themselves with clarity and precision, across all subjects and genres. When guiding children towards independence, they can revise, edit, and refine their writing. Constructive feedback and personalised support play pivotal roles in this process. We foster a positive writing culture by celebrating pupils’ achievements and facilitating peer collaboration.

We use a diverse range of quality authors and genres, enabling children to push the boundaries of their creativity.

The Porthleven Way of Writing is more than just a curriculum—it’s a journey of discovery, self-expression and purpose.

Talk with passion.

Oracy is the foundation for effective communication and comprehension skills. It fosters imagination, vocabulary development, and confidence.

Early Writing

At Porthleven, we value the importance of talk and recognise the vital link between speech and language and building vocabulary and conversation. We begin by using the child’s interests and life experiences, engaging them in conversations that enable opportunities for expert modelling. Time to Talk is used to help a child find their voice and improve their oral language skills.

Oracy precedes writing, enabling children to articulate ideas fluently. Oracy develops the child’s capacity to use speech to express their thoughts and communicate with others. This enhances their ability to promote a love for storytelling when writing.

Our environment provides language-rich opportunities for our children to express themselves and converse with others. Where oracy is at the heart of literacy, there is a measurable impact on progress and attainment. Stem sentences are introduced and embedded in all aspects of learning.

Children love expressing their thoughts and ideas verbally. Putting those thoughts on paper (writing) happens in stages that kids work through at their own pace. Some will develop writing skills quickly; for others, it will take longer.

Although we do not formally teach children to ‘write’, there are plenty of skills and activities that are promoted to support later writing skills, these include:

• Mark Making – Pencils, pens, felt tips, whiteboards, chalk, paints with sponges, brushes and fingers etc.

• Hand-eye coordination – funky fingers, threading, tweezers

• Access to written words – Name tags, books, labels, seeing adults model handwriting

• Story scribing

• Manipulative skills – playing instruments, scissor skills, playdough, spreading and using cutlery independently

• Using large movements such as catching, throwing and climbing

If children are interested in experimenting with writing and letter formation, we support them with this as we promote their individual interests.

Their narrative voice begins with Talk Through Stories, designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary and understanding of how ideas link together to form a sequence of events. Talk Through Stories uses a planned systematic approach to develop a love for familiar stories and build the use of key vocabulary. The children will be able to verbally recall the story, being fully immersed in all parts of the story before writing.

Children also use sentence stacking, which is a whole-class teaching approach Teachers model the art of building a sentence by saying the sentence, using precise vocabulary and building on grammar techniques. All sentences use a ‘My Turn, Your Turn’ Approach to read the sentence back.

Stories chosen for all writing in EYFS offer opportunities to use drama, real-life experiences and other resources, such as photography, film, artefacts and illustrations to maximise talk and vocabulary development. They are carefully chosen to offer a wide range of interests to engage. Granny Fantastic is part of The Write Staff and is a familiar face in EYFS, where she helps promote and develop vocabulary.

Create with purpose.

The Porthleven Way of Writing is taught around the inclusion of a high-quality oracy curriculum. Children learn to write through imitation and make effective progress when adults use arefully planned, modelled and scaffolded talk in the classroom. This broadens and deepens children’s verbal responses and explanations. Oracy provides the opportunity to talk effectively and build confidence in what children want to write.

Teachers deliberately plan to enrich lessons with oracy and ensure that opportunities for pupil talk are a regular feature across the curriculum.

When we talk to write, our learners are encouraged to speak in full, coherent sentences when sharing their ideas and using spoken language. We have created a bank of differentiated sentence stems that our learners have access to in their classrooms and are carefully used in teacher’s planning.

For children to be confident, effective communicators, they must practice active listening. We have developed a school listening ladder as a toolkit for teachers and children to refer to throughout the school day.

 

When writing, we use a method of sentence stacking, using The Write Stuff lenses. This follows a structure where sentences are built and stacked through modelling, discussion and collaboration with the adult.

The adult will use The Write Stuff lenses, which are visual prompts for the children to associate with the key concepts of the National Curriculum. Children develop their own sentences using the new focus that has been taught and modelled explicitly by the teacher and incorporate this with previous learning.

 

Lenses cover all the key concepts of:

• Word Structure

• Sentence structure

• Text Structure

• Punctuation

• Vocabulary

As part of the writing process, ‘Experience Lessons’ are added to bring a wealth of understanding and cultural capital to enrich our children’s writing through these encounters. These include drama, days out or immersing the children in an experience to support the writing. For Example, eating chocolate cake to understand the poem Chocolate Cake before writing.

To enable a continued thematic approach, these key concepts are mapped out across the Foundation stage, Key Stages 1 and 2.

Every new writing unit begins with the use of a narrative map for fiction writing and a shapes map for non-fiction, which provides a clear outline of how writing will unfold. This sequence takes 4 – 6 days, completing one plot point or one non-fiction feature of the writing per day. Character’s emotions are also tracked on the map which often informs children‘s choice and effective development of vocabulary. Similarly, in non-fiction writing, the audience‘s emotions are tracked, which informs the choice of vocabulary chosen.

 

Each lesson (or plot point) is broken down into learning chunks, where teachers initiate conversation and model the process of creating sentences with precision. 

Using the ‘We Do’ prompt, they engage the children’s imagination through the use of specific lenses and build on the mood of the plot point. The process of chotting (chatting and jotting initial ideas) enables high-quality purposeful vocabulary to be introduced and pre-determined by the teacher and for children to share and build upon with their own vocabulary input. This stimulus, prepares the child to write. Kind calling out is used and this focused speaking and listening input makes sure that all children are exposed to the same vocabulary choices.

 

Once the chotting is completed and using the ‘ I Do’ prompt, a modelled sentence referring to the appropriate focus lens is provided – this is a time for the teacher to share ideas and verbalise the writing process, clearly outlining the writing features and techniques including spelling rules, punctuation and grammar.

These short, intensive moments of learning can immediately be applied to their writing using the ‘You Do’ prompt. The children are then enabled to write

their sentences, using the lenses to guide them. They are encouraged to verbalise their sentence with their buddy so that they can hold the sentence mentally before scribing. Scaffolding can be provided using a small selection of chosen words in a word bank, sentence starters or lens prompts.

 

These structured lesson expectations provide explicit information on the layout and timings of the writing process. Live marking is completed and an orange dot in the margin indicates where the children are to edit. Resources can be used to support writing and encourage automaticity in editing and revising writing, which is needed when writing independently.

 

Deepening the moment prompts provide the children torevisit grammar previously taught or promote challenges in extending ideas around lenses recently introduced. They are completed without any support. The writer must stay in the moment of that plot point and not move their writing on.

Sentence stacking occurs as a collaborative piece of writing, where pupils provide the sentences from each learning chunk, with an expectation that every child contributes. They read their sentence aloud so that peers can contribute to the editing and feedback process. Only grammatically correct sentences are added. Spelling rules and vocabulary choices offer further discussion points. It is important to reread the whole sentence stacking board so that the children can check and edit the growing narrative.

 

Grammar is taught during sentence stacking lessons with some discrete grammar elements being seen across school, when needed. Grammar is revisited in an initial slide to allow teachers to build the children’s essential knowledge.

 

Write with precision.

Independent Writing provides the opportunity for children to apply all the skills learned using a similar approach. The stimulus for writing will provide them with an adaptation from the modelled writing so that they can apply their own creativity and flair in writing using any of the lenses they have learned.

Provided with a narrative map or shape map, they are encouraged to plan their plot points through images, key vocabulary and lenses that will help them apply the techniques, features and grammar they know.

Independent writing tasks offer the children enough variety to excite them and build on their own life experiences and learning. For example, having built a modelled narrative on the Queen’s misplaced Knickers can provide the stimulus for any lost item by themselves or someone they know in any situation.

Once the narrative or shapes map is completed, children verbalise their planning with their peers. Talking through these initial drafts promotes peer-to-peer collaboration and supports the writing process. Highquality classroom talk is essential to pupils’ thinking and learning, as they can reflect on what they have learned and improve their writing further.

Using their own narrative maps or shape map, children follow the same procedures as modelled writing: recognise the lens and its focus, chot vocabulary to go with the lens and write a sentence. Teachers provide children with prompts to revisit their maps and use classroom resources that are part of daily teaching practice. They do not provide a narrative of their ideas at this point.

Once the final piece of writing is completed, children are provided time to independently edit their work. This should not be arduous and should be completed by the child without any peer or adult support.

In the initial stages of writing, children will become confident in talking about their stories and the words that they will use. They will be retelling modelled texts and sharing their ideas on what they might write.

As children progress through school, they will grow in the range of words used to explain their thought processes and implement them in their writing. Children will edit and correct work that is associated with the lenses taught to them. They will know how sentences are built through rehearsing and revisiting the stacked sentences and their writing.

By the end of Year 6, children will be able to confidently discuss their adaptations, and stack sentences with precision, using a variety of grammatical elements, across a variety of genres for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Children will have fostered a love of writing and an understanding of its importance and purpose.

The Porthleven Way of Writing supports all writers through:

• Talking is at the heart of writing, where the modelling of sentence structure, and overall text is essential.

• Every opportunity to talk is used to build knowledge of sentence structure and vocabulary.

• The lenses scaffold the national curriculum expectations and provide clear key concepts for writing.

• Vocabulary is integral to every lesson, exposing children to a growing number of new words and their meanings.

• Children have the opportunity to discuss synonyms, intensity of words, alternative vocabulary choices and using words with precision.

• High-quality modelling directs children and builds on independence in writing.

• Success drives motivation and working in sentences with clear goals helps set achievable targets.

• The structure of the lessons into chunks prevents the working memory from being overloaded and therefore offers a higher chance of success, building self-esteem.

• Relationships are developed through the approach; talking partners, kind calling out, sentence stacking and appreciation, all provide a positive respectful learning relationship to evolve between pupils and adults.

• Sentence stacking wall promotes a sense of belonging, independence and a sense of ownership. Feedback during sentence sharing is more likely to be well received due to the positive relationships.

• There is always an opportunity to add additional lenses at any time to ‘Deepen the Moment’ where pupils can apply the model to their writing and say more about the sentence they are on.

 Our children believe:

“Writing about a battle cry about my favourite book helped me understand the character. I have to show negative and positive language choices to show her emotions.” (Year 6)

The shark was swimming in the choppy sea (Reception)

“Pangolins are so interesting. Writing about them and researching them for my fact file was great .” (Year 3)

The Queen lost her knickers just like my mum who loses everything! (Yr1)