The skills of reading, writing, and speaking and listening are vitally important and will have a direct influence on all areas of the curriculum.

Our aim is to encourage our pupils to have a love for reading and writing and have a good understanding of vocabulary in the written and spoken format.

At LPA, writing is taught through The Write Stuff writing scheme. This approach makes sure that all of our children are exposed to high quality texts that stimulate quality responses to reading, high quality writing and purposeful speaking and listening opportunities. Our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing. Writing is taught through a number of different strategies. We believe that children need lots of rich speaking and drama activities to give them the imagination and the experiences that will equip them to become good writers.

The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

We recognise the importance of developing a clear style of handwriting early on. In the reception class, children are taught to form each letter of the alphabet correctly. Presentation is important and pupils are encouraged to take a pride in their work. Writing is frequently displayed and celebrated at St. Peter’s.

What writing looks like in our school:

  • Learners being encouraged to write.
  • Daily writing sessions which link to class text.
  • Shared writing sessions for the entire class.
  • Guided writing sessions for small groups of children.
  • Clear objectives being taught.
  • Children engaged in activities to help them internalise texts such as role play and hot seating.
  • Clear feedback to the children.
  • Examples of text, children’s work and other appropriate resources on working walls.
  • Children referring to the working wall and other resources.
  • Motivated learners who enjoy writing.

End of EYFS

  • Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.
  • They also write some irregular common words.
  • They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others.
  • Some words are spelled correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

End of KS1

  • Write simple, coherent narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real or fictional). Write about real events, recording these simply and clearly.
  • Demarcate most sentences in their writing with capital letters and full stops, and use question marks correctly when required.
  • Use present and past tense mostly correctly and consistently. Use co-ordination (e.g. or / and / but) and some subordination (e.g. when / if / that / because) to join clauses.
  • Segment spoken words into phonemes and represent these by graphemes, spelling many of these words correctly and making phonically-plausible attempts at others.
  • Spell many common exception words.
  • Form capital letters and digits of the correct size, orientation and relationship to one another and to lower-case letters.
  • Use spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.

End of Lower KS2

  • In narratives, describe settings and characters.
  • Use a range of devices to build cohesion (e.g. conjunctions, adverbials of time and place, pronouns, synonyms) within and across paragraphs.
  • Use the range of punctuation taught at key stage 2 mostly correctly (e.g. inverted commas and other punctuation to indicate direct speech).
  • Integrate dialogue in narratives to convey character and advance the action.

End of KS2

  • Write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences, selecting language that shows good awareness of the reader (e.g. the use of the first person in a diary; direct address in instructions and persuasive writing).
  • In narratives, describe settings, characters and atmosphere.• Select vocabulary and grammatical structures that reflect what the writing requires, doing this mostly appropriately (e.g. using contracted forms in dialogues in narrative; using passive verbs to affect how information is presented; using modal verbs to suggest degrees of possibility).
  • Use verb tenses consistently and correctly throughout their writing.
  • Use the range of punctuation taught at key stage 2 mostly correctly (e.g. inverted commas and other punctuation to indicate direct speech).
  • Spell correctly most words from the year 5 / year 6 spelling list. 
  • Use a dictionary to check the spelling of uncommon or more ambitious vocabulary.
  • Maintain legibility in joined handwriting when writing at speed.