Creative writing at Sea View

The purpose of writing

The programmes of study for writing at key stages 1 and 2 are constructed similarly to those for reading:

• transcription (spelling and handwriting)
• composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing)

It is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these 2 dimensions. In addition, pupils should be taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing. These aspects of writing have been incorporated into the programmes of study for composition.

Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) and understanding the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words. Effective composition involves articulating and communicating ideas, and then organising them coherently for a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Writing also depends on fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting.

Meet Eddie English.

Eddie is part of our Curriculum Crew who is introduced at the start of each Literacy  lesson, providing a visual link to lessons and allows our children to focus on the skills needed in the upcoming tasks.

Eddie is featured in our Writing Knowledge Organisers - allowing the children to revisit and consolidate prior learning as well as acquiring new skills.

2023-2024

Nursery

Reception

In Reception we have been exploring fiction and non-fiction texts. We have looked at the story of 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' before exploring our favourite facts about tigers. As part of this we have wrote captions using images from the story and wrote our favourite tiger facts using sounds that we know.

In Reception, we have been using our knowledge of the phonics sounds that we have been taught to record initial and some end sounds in words from the story 'Giraffes Can't Dance'. We looked at the picture and said what we could see and then used Fredtalk to say each of the sounds in the words. We then used the sound mat to find the sounds and wrote them down onto the paper. 

Year 1

This half term we have been reading the story 'Wild' by Emily Hughes. The children have immersed themselves fully in the story. They have thought about the characters thoughts and feelings at each part of the story. They contributed to a class debate regarding the events of the story and they wrote fantastic newspaper articles. 

This term we have been reading The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. We have learnt how to use nouns and adjectives to describe the characters and the settings. 

At the end of the story we talked about the theme of friendship throughout the story and we discussed the characteristics of a good friend. We then used these characteristics as ingredients to create a friendship potion. The children then wrote a list of ingredients that they used to make their potions. 

Year 2 

In spring term we have began looking at the the text 'The Tin Forest' by Helen Ward and Wayne Anderson. To begin exploring the text the children created their own tin flowers after observing the front cover of the story. Following from this, we have began to explore the text in more detail. The children have wrote setting descriptions based upon their first impressions of The Tin Forest. The children have also met the main character of the story, they have used their inference skills to write and discuss what they think the character may be thinking or feeling. 

We have been exploring poetry using our quality text as a stimulus.  We used our senses to record descriptive lines for our poems them edited and ordered them before recording our final versions!

Year 3

Year 4

Escape from Pompeii 

We are enjoying reading all about Tranio and his escape from the volcanic eruption in Pompeii. 

We are using this story as a stimulus for our writing activities this term. We have empathised with the character of Tranio to write a thought bubble to describe how he might have felt when Mount Vesuvius was about to erupt!

The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

by Kate DiCamillo 

We are enjoying reading all about Edward Tulane and his miraculous journey! 

We are using this story as a stimulus for our writing activities this term. We have written powerful descriptions using adjectives, similes and prepositional phrases. We have empathised with the character of Edward Tulane to write a thought bubble to describe how he might have felt when he was thrown overboard the ship. We designed persuasive posters to advertise our farm shops.

Year 5

Lost In Space.

As Commanders of the first manned mission to Mars we have conducted research on the red planet which prepared us for our mission. We then wrote motivational speeches inspiring our crew and team.

The Night Bus Hero

By

Onjali Q. Rauf

Hector is a bully, a menace and a lost cause. He hates school (especially the teacher's pets and brainiacs), he hates home and he despises the trolleyman who lives in the park. As items from famous landmarks around London begin to mysteriously disappear, Hector is thrown head first into solving the crimes leading to him to reassess his actions.

Inspired by the novel we have written diary entries in the style of Hector, created missing posters  for the missing Paddington Statue as well as completing an eye witness report in which we wrote in role.

Year 6

Macbeth

This term we are studying Macbeth. After watching episodes 1 and 2, we stepped into the shoes of Macbeth, writing powerful letters to our wife, Lady Macbeth. Take a look at some of our fabulous letters... 

Holes- Louis Sachar

This term Year 6 are reading Holes by Louis Sachar. Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn't green and doesn't have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. Why? The evil warden claims that it's character building, but this is a lie. It's up to Stanley to dig up the truth. Take a look at our fabulous writing so far...

We created non-chronological reports about the yellow spotted lizard...

We wrote newspaper reports about Kissin' Kate's murder of the sheriff...

2022-2023

Nursery

A day at Witch & Wizard school 🧙🪄

We used our topic of Chinese New Year to enhance our mark-making in nursery.

Reception

In Reception we have started to learn our Set 1 sounds. We have been using our phonics knowledge to begin forming letter shapes. 

We have been writing a list of items of clothing from the story ‘The smartest giant in town’. We have started learning our phonics so we can begin to write some letter shapes and initial sounds.

After we had made porridge to eat just like Goldilocks in the story 'Goldilocks and The Three Bears', we recorded key words and phrases from the instructions we were given from Mammy Bear. We used Fred Talk to sound out each of the words, pinching each finger as we said the sounds. We then recorded the sounds, using our phonics knowledge alongside the soundcards to write the correct letters. 

In writing, we have been learning facts about tigers linked to the story 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea'. We used our phonics knowledge to write simple fact sentences 

including some red words in our writing. We are beginning to show confidence using capital letters and full stops in our writing. 

Year 1

Wild

We have been enjoying our story Wild!

We took a trip into nature to imagine what life would be like for the little girl who lives in the forest. We explored the woods, found a fox's den, looked up at the cloud and visited the play park to imagine swinging and climbing in the trees! The children used their senses to experience the forest like the girl in the story.

This trip inspired our descriptive writing where we used lots of wonderful adjectives!

Who has been causing trouble in Year 1?

Year 1 found their classroom in a bit of a mess this week after a visit from the Big Bad Wolf!

We used the clues to work out who might have been causing trouble in our classroom. We even looked at CCTV footage to help us create wanted posters to find that troublesome Big Bad Wolf!

We have been reading the story The Rainbow Fish. Children have used the images to help them collect nouns and adjectives to write a fantastic setting description. 

After this, children put themselves into the role of one of the characters and described their thoughts and feelings. 

Year 2

DRAGONS SPOTTED IN SEA VIEW!

Mr Cunningham caught a wild, enormous dragon on CCTV over the weekend.  It had returned to collect its babies after their eggs hatched in our classroom.  We couldn't believe our eyes and decided to write news articles to let our town know about our amazing footage!

In year 2 we have been reading the story When The Dragons Came. We are using this story to learn about adjectives and nouns and begin to construct exciting and engaging sentences. 

Year 3

We have had a lot of fun using onomatopoeic words to create our comic strips about the rainforest!

Year 3

In Year 3, we have been using the changing of the season to create these fabulous Autumn poems.  

Year Four

Fairy Tales

We wrote our own fairy tales based on the film clip, ‘The Little Shoemaker’.

The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

by Kate DiCamillo 

We are enjoying reading all about Edward Tulane and his miraculous journey! 
We are using this story as a stimulus for our writing activities this term. We have written powerful descriptions using adjectives, similes and prepositional phrases. We have empathised with the character of Edward Tulane to write a thought bubble to describe how he might have felt when he was thrown overboard the ship.  

Year 5

The Explorer 

by 

Katherine Rundell

The children are loving our class adventure book The Explorer. In the story, Fred and three other children crash land in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. Along their journey, they encounter many challenges, dangerous animals and encounter a mysterious man.

The Night Bus Hero

By

Onjali Q. Rauf

Inspired by one of the key themes of our novel, "The Night Bus Hero" , we conducted research about the issue of homelessness. After then taking part in Prime Minister's Questions, we wrote powerful and emotive speeches addressing the House of Commons, demanding action by the government, to support and tackle the issue  of homelessness.

Hector is a bully, a menace and a lost cause. He hates school (especially the teacher's pets and brainiacs), he hates home and he despises the trolleyman who lives in the park. As items from famous landmarks around London begin to mysteriously disappear, Hector is thrown head first into solving the crimes leading to him to reassess his actions.

Diary Entries

The children created their own diary entries in the character of Hector. They described their hatred of the people at school and plotted their revenge on the trolleyman in the park.

Year 6

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf.

We are really enjoying our new book for this term, The Boy at the Back of the Class. 

When a new boy joins their class, a group of children try to befriend him. They soon learn that Ahmet is a refugee and has been separated from his family. None of the grown-ups seem to be able to help him, so the friends come up with a daring plan, embarking on an extraordinary adventure. 

Take a look at some of incredible poems about refugees...

Holes- Louis Sachar 

Take a look at our fabulous display based on Holes. We have created many incredible pieces of writing throughout this unit. We have produced letters home in role as Stanley, non-chronological reports about the yellow-spotted lizard, newspaper reports about the murder of the sheriff as well as wanted posters for Zero. 

As part of our writing based on 'Holes' we have created persuasive leaflets on Camp Green Lake. Take a look at our wonderful work...

Nursery

Communication and language sit at the heart of writing.  We use quality texts to build language that will feed into the writing the children will do.

The Role play area is often linked to the stories we share in class and helps to reinforce story language and stimulate the children's imagination.

An Elf came to visit us and shared a funny story. We joined in the story through action and rhyme.

We had great fun using puppets and props to retell the story of Supertato.

We extended our vocabulary, exploring new and unusual fruit and animals in 'Handa's Suprise'.

The development of fine and gross motor skills is critical for the act of writing. 

We provide opportunities for the children to develop these skills through a variety of opportunities. For example disco dough, mark making to music, ribbons, scissors, tweezers and pegs.

Reading and writing act as dual strands within literacy, building on the vital skills of speaking and listening to allow us to communicate and explore ideas.

Stories play a crucial role in the development of thinking and writing. Through listening to and sharing stories, children pick up on the patterns of story language – “Once upon a time …”, “And they lived happily ever after …”, “He huffed and he puffed”.

We have created characters from the stories and used maps to help tell stories or create stories.

Reception

The little raindrop

We loved sharing the story, ‘The Little Raindrop’. We enjoyed finding out about the weather and how it rains. We shared our ideas about the different types of weather. 

Shrove Tuesday 

We loved making pancakes to celebrate Shrove Tuesday. We made lists of ingredients and wrote the instructions of how we made them.

Amazing animals

We have enjoyed reading animal stories and finding out about different animals. One of our favourites was, ‘The tiger who came for tea’. We made lists of the food the tiger ate.

Year One

Winter's Child - Angela McAllister

We looked at the beautiful illustrations in our story Winter's Child and made predictions about who the main character might be, why he was standing in front of a magical gate, and why he has no shoes on in the snow! 

Throughout the story we used the text and illustrations to think about how characters were feeling, what choices characters would make. We even wrote in the role of Tom and kept a diary of his day! 

Year Two

The Dark - Lemony Snicket

We watched a book trailer for the The Dark and thought about what clues it gave us about the story, events and characters.  Some people thought it was really creepy but we enjoyed making inferences about what or who the dark could be.

The Tin Forest - Helen Ward

We loved exploring the Tin Forest and used it as a stimulus for a range of writing, including poetry.  We worked collaboratively to create poems focussed around different uses of descriptive language.  We then edited then and changed the order of our lines until we were happy with the outcome. 

Traction Man

We loved creating our own outfit for Traction Man and designing our own comic.  We thought about where our Traction Man would be visiting in his outfit and even designed our own bad guys for him to battle.

Year Three

The Witch's Brew

As part of our digital literacy scheme of work, we developed our understanding of poetry and rhyme through the creation of spells.  The children were immersed in a variety of stimulus and texts such as Disney's Fantasia and Sword in the Stone as well as Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The Great Kapok Tree

In Year 3 we have enjoyed learning all about the rainforest through the fantastic book The Great Kapok Tree.  The children have enjoyed a wide variety of writing experiences to develop their writing skills.

Year Five

The Explorer

by Katherine Rundell.

We are loving our exciting novel, "The Explorer", by Katherine Rundell. Inspired by the characters battle for survival we have written postcards from the Amazon , survival guides and a guide to raft building, fact files, adverts and poetry inspired by the challenges the children encounter .

Postcards from the Amazon...

Jungle Survival Guides.

A Guide to Raft Building.

Year Six

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf.

When a new boy joins their class, a group of children try to befriend him. They soon learn that Ahmet is a refugee and has been separated from his family. None of the grown-ups seem to be able to help him, so the friends come up with a daring plan, embarking on an extraordinary adventure. 
Take a look at some of our amazing writing based on this book…

Refugee Poems…

Special Appeal…