Handwriting

In Reception children are introduced to cursive writing when learning digraphs and trigraphs by adding a 'flick' to their letter formation in line with good practice in line with research.

There are many opportunities through out early years programme for our youngest children to develop their muscle strength and fine motor and manipulative skills which will support the development of correct pencil grips and stamina for the physical act of writing. The Letter-join cursive handwriting resource is used to support the development of handwriting throughout the school.  The programme also has capacity for home learning, where children need additional support.

Writing

We use Talk for Writing to structure our writing curriculum. Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version. Talk for Write is then continued throughout KS2 as a stimulus for writing across all genres.  

As we teach through topics or themes, whilst ensuring children have full coverage of all National Curriculum strands for writing, we reinforce the principles of Talk for Write through all subjects in order to develop for high quality cross curricular writing.

Children become increasingly knowledgeable about strategies and techniques writers use to realise their writing intentions and how they can leave an impression on a variety of audiences through their writing.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

We aim for children to become knowledgeable about the different reasons writers are moved to write: to teach, persuade or influence, entertain, paint with words and to make a record. We support them in becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the writing process and the development of their own preferred writing style. This includes increasing their knowledge of how grammar functions within the craft of writing.  Through authentic use of punctuation and grammar, children become knowledgeable about grammatical and linguistic terms. They use punctuation, grammar and syntax in order to aid their audience ability to read their writing easily and as they intended. There is a comprehensive programme of grammar teaching across the school through the Talk for Writing programme. 

The basis for our spelling programme is No Nonsense Spelling, supplemented by pre teaching of topic words, revision of National Curriculum word lists and identification of common errors for each pupil.