Writing is a powerful means of communication; our aim is for all children to be able to write confidently for a range of purposes and audiences.

We have designed our curriculum to ensure that children develop their knowledge in writing, in order to:

- Confidently use the appropriate grammar when writing. 

- Apply strategies to ensure spelling is accurate. 

- Write in a legible and joined script. 

- Write a range of text types, for a range of purposes using the appropriate features. 

- Confidently use strategies to check, edit and improve writing. 

From the beginning of Early Years, children are encouraged to mark make in a variety of ways and are taught how to make the shape of letters. This develops in to words, sentences, paragraphs and so on. Throughout the school, children are exposed to high quality examples; they learn to write a variety of text types, which are progressive across year groups. Together, we create 'writing toolkits' which support the children in understanding and recording the key features of a particular text as well as supporting children to edit their writing and assess its effectiveness. 

Handwriting

As a school, we introduce cursive handwriting in step-by-step stages in line with the curriculum. Children’s personal handwriting style is developed to ensure they meet the ‘expected standard’ in the end of key stage writing teacher assessments. Letters are introduced systematically.

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The four letter sets

Set 1: c o a d g f s q e    (all the of these letters are formed by going anti-clockwise. We call these curly caterpillar letters).

Set 2: i l t j u y                (all of these letters start by going straight down. We call these ladder letters). 

Set 3: b h k m n p r        (all of these letters have a curve formed by going clockwise. We call these one armed robot letters).

Set D: v w x z                  (all of these letters have straight lines. We call these zigzag monster letters). 

The four letter joins

Join 1:   diagonal join to small letters 

Join 2:  diagonal join to tall letters

Join 3:  horizontal joins to small letters

Join 4:  horizontal joins to tall letters

Children complete regular handwriting practice according to their year group and needs. Clear handwriting is an expectation for all writing across the curriculum and actively encouraged.

Spelling

In Early Years and Year 1, spelling is taught within the discreet daily phonics lesson following 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds.' In Year 2, children start Little Wandle's 'Bridge to Spelling' lessons. From Years 3-6, children start to use Spelling Shed. We use Spelling Shed as our KS2 Spelling Scheme. 

In Early Years, children will start to learn to spell some tricky words as well as using the grapheme phoneme correspondence to write words. They will learn that each phoneme is represented by a grapheme when spelling. In Year 1 they will learn to spell the year 1 common exception words and they will learn alternative graphemes for spelling. This is all outlined in our Little Wandle Letters and Sounds progression. 

Children learn the National Curriculum spelling rules and common exception words/ statutory spelling lists (KS2) within their Spelling Shed lessons and these are regularly practiced at school and home; every child has a spelling homework book.