We want all of our children to become successful and confident writers. From the beginnings of Nursery through to the end of Year 6, the children develop their writing skills through a wide range of purposeful and exciting activities and experiences. There are two aspects of writing, ‘transcription’ (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing).

The combination of fiction and non-fiction units we have carefully selected to follow provide children throughout their journey with the experience of a wide range of high-quality texts and authors. A focus on genre-led learning in English with high-quality teacher modelling and collection of appropriate vocabulary.

Our sequence of learning promotes familiarity with the text, genre and appropriate features.

 We:

• Introduce the genre/text
• Explore the features of genre/text and collect supporting language
• Practise different elements
• Apply the learnt skills in a final piece of writing
• Assessment of the final piece

Handwriting:

The school has a handwriting policy centred on the Nelson Handwriting scheme of learning. Physical development in the Nursery and Reception classes includes plenty of opportunity to develop eye-hand co-ordination and fine and gross muscle control which will in enable each child to be a successful writer. The children gain a wide range of experiences in the Early Years in order to learn the correct letter shapes and formation.

As the children move through the school they continue to build their handwriting skills and these become more refined. The children focus on learning shape and letter patterns in letter “families”.

Once the letters are being formed in the correct direction, children will be encouraged to consider placement on the lines (e.g. hanging ascenders below the line) and differentiation between upper and lower case letters. Once children are solidly demonstrating these skills, joined writing will be taught from Year 2 with the view to fluently joining letters. Children who join their writing well will be offered a handwriting pen to use, typically from Year 4.