St Mary's Catholic Primary School

EYFS 

In our EYFS classroom we use Drawing Club to inspire the children to want to write. The process of writing is ambitious and aligned closely with how Writing is taught in the rest of the school so that they are ready to move up to the KS1 curriculum when they move into Y1. 

Children are given reasons for writing, and it is taught in a fun and short-burst way as well as opportunities being given for children to use and consolidate their skills within play. The acquisition of ambitious vocabulary is prioritised in planning, alongside the teaching of fine motor control and mark making for a purpose. In the EYFS, teaching focuses heavily on creating a language rich environment to develop speaking and listening skills, listening to and responding to a range of stories and non-fiction texts and starting to make the links between phonics and writing for a purpose. 
Spelling is taught using Little Wandle and the expectations are ambitious for our children. 

KS1 & KS2 

From KS1 upwards, each year group completes a number of writing units. The journey of units has been mapped out carefully so that the children experience a broad range of genres, text types and themes as they move through school. As each unit is specific to the year group, this ensures that we also have a clear progression of skills and knowledge.  

A unit comprise of 3 types of lesson: experience lessons, short burst practise lessons, and independent writing:  

Experience lessons provide children with a stimulus that builds excitement about, and ideas to apply, to writing and helps to build quality vocabulary. Research shows that children with a wide vocabulary are more likely to be successful. 

Short burst writing lessons are based around a key plot point or grammatical device in the story. It builds up in small steps called learning chunks – within each chuck, time is made for discussion and collation of vocabulary and ideas, quality instruction around knowledge and skills and time for the children to apply those ideas, vocabulary and skills independently within sentences. The focus of these lessons is very much on quality rather than quantity and we encourage children to ‘deepen the moment’ rather than push on with the plot. 

Finally, the independent sequence of lessons, gives children time to consolidate what they have learnt and apply it to their own piece of writing. In this part of the sequence, children have time to edit their writing using the learning wall and other materials independently. They may also get to publish their writing for a specific purpose and audience, however, we do not make the children write up every piece of writing ‘into best’ as we want to maintain their pleasure in writing. 

At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, writing is taught 4x per week across the whole school.  We passionately believe that reading and writing are inextricably linked therefore studying the text in both reading and writing sessions encourages children to make links and become empathetic and ambitious writers. Long, medium and short term planning and the use of progression maps ensure that a variety of genres are progressively taught and built upon both throughout the year and throughout the school. 

Within each unit of work, sequenced lessons ensure that prior learning is checked and built upon and that National Curriculum objectives are taught through a combination of approaches/opportunities e.g. 

• Opportunities to participate in drama & spoken language activities 
• Exploring the features of different text types and modelled examples (e.g.) Spotting features in a WAGOLL – What a good one looks like)
• Handwriting practise 
• Vocabulary practise 
• Shared writing (modelled expectations)
• Discrete Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar lessons 
• Independent writing 
• Planning, drafting, editing, up-levelling and presenting 
• Performing 

Writing is also a key focus in the wider curriculum. Children are given the opportunity to transfer and build upon their knowledge of a genre studied during English lessons and apply this learning to a topic focus. 

Handwriting 

It is paramount that children are rigorously taught correct letter formation from the very beginning of their time in school. During the foundation stage, children are taught to sit properly in order to have the correct posture for writing, hold a pencil in the correct position and develop a legible handwriting style. In KS1, handwriting is taught in a systematic and progressive way which is adapted to support children of all ability levels. Teachers are expected to model the school’s handwriting style when marking children’s work, writing on the board and on displays around the school.