Learning Specialist News

THE BIG IDEAS OF WRITING

Writing is a complicated skill that is vital for our ability to express and communicate ideas. At SMPPS, we develop our students' writing ability by supporting them through the Big Ideas of Writing. As students master foundational skills and they become more automatic, they begin to add complexity into their writing, allowing them to focus on ideas, purpose and audience. 

To begin with, students need to be able to share and listen to stories, verbalise ideas and sentences. Their phonological awareness then allows them to hear the individual words and the sounds in each word. As students enter prep, they improve their fine motor skills, through drawing and pattern work and learn how to form letters, developing their handwriting. They also build their letter sound relationship, allowing them to start writing words and sentences with approximate letter choices. 

The next Big Idea in writing is spelling. At first students focus on hearing all the sounds in words to write down a letter (or letters) for each sound. Across our junior school they learn both regular and irregular spelling patterns, spelling guidelines and begin to apply the correct spelling choice. This skill is built upon across the senior school as students also learn about morphology and etymology - helping them to think about the meaning of parts of words, and the origin of words. 

While students' spelling understandings increase in complexity and accuracy, they begin to write simple sentences. Students learn that simple sentences require one idea, with a noun and a verb, and then start to build in more descriptions through adjectives and adverbs. Once students have simple sentences, they learn how to combine sentences using conjunctions to add or contrast ideas, and to frame independent and dependent clauses. 

The last two Big Ideas are text structures and paragraphing. Students start to develop an understanding of different text structures for a range of genres. They think about the purpose and audience, varying their word choice and sentences to best communicate ideas. As their writing becomes longer and more complex, they learn how to group and organise their ideas into paragraphs, allowing them to communicate with clarity. 

Within these Big Ideas, are further pieces of learning that are required, such as building an understanding of grammar and punctuation. These Big Ideas also overlap as depth is added and students learn to apply their skills more strategically. Over, and across the years at SMPPS, we celebrate as our students develop their own writing voice and learn to communicate effectively and powerfully. Have a look at some writing samples from Prep to Grade 6!