How we get our children to be confident, effective writers, who understand writing for a purpose across a range of genres.

 Writing Statement of Intent

At St Thomas’ Catholic Primary School, we understand how important it is for children to leave primary school as effective writers, who can write for a range of purposes. Our aim is for our pupils to have a love of writing. We have therefore created a carefully thought out curriculum to ensure the writing journey our pupils take with us is a successful one and prepares them for the next stage of their education.

Our aims are to:

• Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers.
• Provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and enhance all pupils.
• We want all children to acquire a wide vocabulary and to be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.
• We want all children to have a solid understanding of grammar and apply it effectively to their writing.
• We want them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• We believe that all children should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, cursive, individual handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school.
• We want every child to have a good knowledge of phonics to springboard children to becoming fluent writers.
• To plan a progressive curriculum to build upon previous teaching, with regular assessment to ensure each child’s needs are met to reach their full potential.

 Implementation of Our Writing Curriculum

Writing is taught four times per week across the whole school. Each class studies a different high-quality text, lasting from a week to a whole term depending on text type, length and year group. We believe that reading and writing are inextricably linked therefore studying the text in both reading and writing sessions encourages children to make links and become ambitious writers. Long, medium and short term planning and the use of progression maps ensure that a variety of genre are progressively taught. These are then built upon; both, throughout the year and throughout the school (see 'writing coverage' and 'skills progression'.) Each genre is taught using the brief: writing to inform, writing to entertain or writing to persuade. Some, naturally lend themselves to more  than one area, e.g. a letter can inform and persuade. In this instance teachers will decide in which term they will cover letter writing or whether it should be covered more than once with a different outcome.

Writing is also a key focus in the wider curriculum, especially in ‘Topic’ lessons. Children are given the opportunity to transfer and build upon their knowledge of a genre studied during English lessons and apply this learning to a topic focus.

Through the writing process, children will acquire and learn the skills to plan, draft and refine their written work over time and are encouraged to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing.

Within each unit of work, sequenced lessons ensure that prior learning is checked and built upon and that National Curriculum objectives are taught through a combination of approaches/opportunities e.g. 

• Opportunities to participate in drama & spoken language activities
• Exploring the features of different text types and modelled examples, for example spotting features in a WAGOLL.
• Handwriting practise
• Vocabulary practise
• Shared writing (modelled expectations)
• Spelling, punctuation and grammar lessons.
• Independent writing
• Planning, drafting, editing, up-levelling and presenting
• Performing

Impact

The impact of our writing curriculum means that children can write well-structured pieces of texts across a range of genres. Pupils will write grammatically sound pieces of writing and have the ability to edit and improve their work. They will understand the features of different genres and develop specific and technical vocabulary for both fiction and non-fiction texts. Children will use their experiences of reading and apply this knowledge in their own writing. Our pupils are ready for the next stage of their writing journey.