Writing

At St John's CE Primary School, we believe that children write best when they have a clear purpose, an engaged audience and high-quality texts to inspire them. Our English curriculum is carefully planned around a rich range of quality children's literature, allowing pupils to immerse themselves in language, ideas and different styles of writing.

Through engaging texts, children explore a wide variety of genres, including narrative, poetry, non-fiction and plays. They learn the features and conventions of each genre while developing the grammatical knowledge, vocabulary and writing skills needed to become confident, effective writers.

Writing sequences are designed to provide children with opportunities to read, discuss, analyse and respond to high-quality texts before planning, drafting, editing and publishing their own writing. Teachers model the writing process and provide regular opportunities for pupils to write independently, applying the skills they have learnt across a range of purposeful contexts.

We use Spelling Shed to support our pupils in developing confident spelling skills through engaging, interactive learning.

Spelling Shed provides a range of games, activities and challenges that help children practise and apply the spelling patterns and rules they are learning in class.

Writing Across the Curriculum

With these techniques firmly embedded during English lessons, the children become confident writers when applying their skills to other areas of the curriculum. Whether they are writing a diary entry for History, giving a scientific explanation or planning a script for a television news report in Geography, the children are aware of their audience and the need to vary their writing style. The children show their confidence and fluency through the writing they complete independently such as letters to authors, recipes for competitions and some particularly persuasive writing to ask for football to be played every day at lunchtime!