English: Writing

Intent: Enabling our children to communicate information, thoughts, feelings and ideas legibly and fluently. 

Our Writing curriculum focuses not only on the doing of writing but most importantly the teaching of writing. 

We have reduced the number of text types visited in order to give time to revisit and deepen understanding of the text types we have chosen to teach. Each text type is visited at least twice during each academic year. Where appropriate text types are linked to learning in other subjects. The text types taught  include a range of narrative text types, non-narrative text types and poetry. 

Underpinned by CUSP Writing, conscious decisions have been made about the front loading of specific text types e.g. poetry in Year 1 in order to support vocabulary acquisition. Children are taught key skills which are revisited and taught through a vertical progression model, for example links between setting description in Year 1 and character description in Year 2 as well as links between biographical writing skills taught in Year 5 being revisited and used in autobiography writing in Year 6.

Our writing  blocks follow a clear teaching process. Week1 focuses on explicit skills, looking at the nuts and bolts of the writing process. During this time, children practise using these skills in short pieces of writing enabling us to minimise the cognitive load.  Weeks two and sometimes three give children the opportunity to apply the skills from week1 to a longer piece of writing. This part of the sequence follows a clear process which is expanded or retracted depending on the text type and age of the children. The process includes key areas such as identifying context, purpose and audience, immersing pupils in high quality models, oral rehearsal, writing and editing.  

Our writing curriculum is supplemented by additional specific spelling and grammar lessons linked directly to CUSP.