English - Writing

Chris Stephenson-Davis, Amy Turner, Stephanie Lang and Clare Barber
English Subject Leaders

"Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."

Albus Dumbledore (JK Rowling)

Writing is a life-long skill that will enable children to participate fully as a member of society. Teaching children to write fluently allows them to communicate their ideas and emotions to others.

English Programmes of Study (KS1 & KS2)

Visions for Writing & Spelling

Progression in Knowledge and Skills for Writing and Spelling at Floreat Montague Park

In Early Years, the children are taught to hold a pencil effectively to prepare them for fluent writing. They learn to write recognisable letters and will form most of these correctly. They use their phonic knowledge to identify sounds and spell words, in order to write simple phrases and sentences.

In Key Stage 1, it is important that children develop the physical skills for handwriting, including holding a pencil comfortably, forming lower-case letters accurately, writing numbers and forming capital letters. They use their phonic skills to encode the sounds they hear in words and will make phonetically plausible attempts at unknown words. Children learn how to organise their ideas by orally rehearsing a sentence before writing it, sequencing sentences into short narratives and re-reading their writing to check that it makes sense. As children become more confident writers, they develop stamina for writing and write for different purposes, both real and fictional and often linked to their curriculum study.

In Lower Key Stage 2, children consolidate their writing skills including vocabulary, sentence structure and their knowledge of linguistic terminology. At this stage children have the tools needed to write their ideas with a reasonable degree of accuracy and with good sentence punctuation. The children are supported to use varied grammar, vocabulary and narrative structures. Throughout Years 3 and 4 the legibility, consistency and quality of the children’s handwriting will develop. Children are given opportunities to write for a range of purposes linked to their curriculum study. They discuss writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar. Children continue to develop their skills in editing and improving their writing, assessing the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggesting improvements.

In Upper Key Stage 2, children develop to write fluently and with enough stamina to meet the demands of secondary school. They will be taught to make conscious choices about their writing, including their sentence structure and vocabulary choices, in order to influence the effect on their reader. They will learn a range of devices which make their writing more cohesive and will use dialogue in narratives to move the story forwards. As well as proofreading for spelling and punctuation errors, they evaluate the effectiveness of their writing and make changes to improve the suitability for the audience and purpose.