Writing

We know that the ability to write with confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. We know that this skill is fundamental to our pupils succeeding; nurturing and inspiring them in becoming confident and creative writers. The themes of nurture, faith, inspiration and success, alongside our Christian values of honour, love and trust thread through our curriculum with the genres and skills that we teach. These themes are also supported by the high-quality texts that run alongside the chosen units of work. Our curriculum is structured and supportive, allowing all children to reach their potential and to give them space and time to think like a writer. We centre our work around developing oracy skills, providing children with opportunities to discuss and work together on writing to help themselves and each other. We aim to create cross-curricular writing opportunities, as we believe that for children to see themselves as successful writers, they need to be involved in writing for a real purpose and for different audiences. We want our children to feel inspired to write; we know that becoming successful writers depends on this. We teach writing with the aim of children being able to articulate what being a writer involves: creating images in a reader’s mind, playing with words, grabbing the reader’s attention and having an impact on how the reader acts or thinks.

The National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage Framework are rooted in our learning and the units we teach are planned carefully to be inclusive and accessible for all children. There is a clear progression of skills and knowledge through the year groups. We know that writing starts before a pencil touches paper; that the development language, creativity, and fine and gross motor skills are the beginnings of our journey and our curriculum nurtures these areas before inspiring children to apply all the taught knowledge and skills into their own writing creations.

Our writing units consist of the following stages:

Engage and Establish – providing children with hooks, experiences or interest in a topic or text

Explore and Experience – high quality modelling, generating vocabulary, and sentence construction allow children to experience and explore writing

Evolve and Evaluate – on-going self or peer-editing and assessment allows children to improve and evaluate their own writing skills

Exhibit – children develop pride over their finished and purposeful writing