At our school, writing is often linked to other areas of the curriculum to provide meaningful and engaging contexts that inspire children and help them make connections across their learning.

Our writing curriculum is organised around four key purposes: to entertain, to inform, to persuade and to discuss. Each half term, children focus on one of these purposes, exploring the features of different text types before applying their learning independently. As children move through school, they revisit each purpose regularly, building on prior learning and becoming increasingly confident and skilled writers.

High-quality texts, novels and poetry form the foundation of our writing curriculum. Where possible, writing sequences begin with the exploration of carefully selected poetry linked to the writing outcome, genre or theme being studied. Through poetry, children are exposed to rich vocabulary, language patterns and effective authorial choices that they can draw upon in their own writing. We are continuing to develop our poetry curriculum to strengthen links between poetry, writing outcomes and the wider curriculum, enabling children to gather and apply increasingly ambitious language in their writing.

Teachers regularly model the writing process, helping children understand how writers generate ideas, plan, draft, revise and edit their work. Grammar, punctuation, spelling and handwriting are taught and practised within meaningful writing contexts, enabling children to write with increasing accuracy, confidence and independence.

We strive to develop:

• Writers with a rich and ambitious vocabulary.
• Writers who can write effectively for different purposes and audiences.
• Writers who apply spelling, grammar and punctuation accurately.
• Writers who are confident, independent and take pride in their work.

Children who can spell feel more confident and able to write with enjoyment. Our goal is to ensure that our children are equipped with a variety of strategies for learning spelling and can use these strategies effectively in their independent writing.

To help support our teaching of spelling, we use an online platform called Spelling Shed for children in Years 1 – 6. Spelling Shed is a fun, game-based tool that can be used at home to help boost children’s confidence in spelling. We believe that a mixed approach using a combination of Spelling Shed and writing out spellings through repeated practice is key to spelling improvement.