Writing

Intent 
At St. John’s, we place importance on developing writing in order for our children to communicate their ideas and emotions to others. We promote high standards of literacy and language to ensure children can write effectively for different purposes. Our intention is to enable all children to be confident writers and have the tools to encapsulate what they want to say using effective grammar and vocabulary.   At St John’s, we celebrate diversity and aim for this to be reflected in the quality reading texts we use for our Topic and Writing work. The children are provided with many opportunities to write with purpose, across the curriculum. We intend for pupils to be able to regularly plan, revise and evaluate their writing through a process of drafting and editing and to give them the skills to write effectively for different audiences. 

Implementation

At St John’s, we have many exciting opportunities to inspire children’s writing. We use varied stimulus to help children use their imagination within their writing; film, music, imagery, talk, literature, play and educational visits. The children are taught a wide range of writing genre to enable them to meet all the objectives within their year group and are taught to high expectations from each adult in school. Teachers provide children with a stand-alone grammar lesson once a week to enable them to obtain a complete understanding of each grammar objective for their year group. These grammar objectives are then taught and revised regularly through English lessons. Teachers use games to enable children to regularly use the terminology they need for Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling tests throughout their school life at St. John’s. Quality texts are used so that children can see good examples of writing and emulate this skill in their own work. Children learn to write using the Read, Write Inc. principles and practise handwriting regularly. Opportunities for writing are given through English lessons, but also in other lessons including RE, topic and reading. Children write an extended piece of writing every two or three weeks, which is assessed and used for formative planning.

Impact

By the end of their time at St. John’s, our children will have been equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to write effective and imaginative pieces of work. Through daily English lessons, our children will have an excellent understanding of grammar, spelling and punctuation to give them the tool kit to express themselves through their writing. Children will have a range of vocabulary to choose from and they will use this to be effective writers in a variety of genre.

By the end of Year Six they will be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.