By the time children leave our Early Years they will be a ‘Wow Writer’, able to “Fred Talk” words, label drawings and write short captions.
By the time children leave Key Stage 1, our children will be able to use their imagination, creativity and voice to share their ideas and express themselves on paper.
By the time children leave our school in Year 6, they will be able to use their imagination and creativity to plan, draft, compose and edit their own writing based on their experiences and literature that they read.
Above all, we aim for all children to be able to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
How we teach writing
Before children can write, they need to develop physical core strength and dexterity by developing both fine and gross motor skills. We teach children how to grip their pencil and support this development through play and practise. This, alongside building language and supporting communication through stories and nursery rhymes, helps our youngest children develop and learn. However, writing is not just about the technical aspects of the process. As a writer, we encourage children to engage with the act of writing, be motivated to communicate their ideas, and think about what those ideas might be and how to share them. Our Reception children build the foundations of writing through Drawing Club.
In Year 1, our pupils build their transcription skills through Curious Quest, a writing scheme which supports them in developing sentence structure skills. They use their imagination to come up with their own ideas for writing through exploring familiar stories. From Year 2 upwards, teachers use the Read-Immerse-Analyse-Plan-Draft-Revise-Edit-Share model, using a range of high quality texts from School Literacy Network and other resources.
We teach children how to hold their pencil, helping them to eventually be ready for a tripod grip (using their thumb, first finger and middle finger). Children are usually ready to adopt a tripod grip at 5 years old; however it is important to remember that children develop differently and that pencil grip develops in different stages.
Our handwriting progression document outlines how and when we teach handwriting skills: