Intent

Immersed in exciting topics, interesting model texts and language rich environments, children will develop a love of writing and the opportunities that this provides. At St Mary’s children will see themselves as writers and authors, experimenting with and exploring language within their own work whilst developing a secure understanding of the technical elements of writing. Performance, poetry and role play provide enjoyable and important opportunities to foster a love of writing whilst giving children the chance to consider a range of ideas – before developing these in their writing. Pupils are encouraged to think creatively, evaluating the work of model texts and building upon their previous and newly acquired learning before articulating their own ideas.

Implementation

Writing

At St Mary’s writing is taught through the CUSP Curriculum, this ensures that children are provided with a wealth of opportunities to write creatively through a wide breadth of topics and genres. Writing tasks have an identified audience, clear purpose and cover all aspects of the writing process – developing on skills needed to complete the final write and building on previous learning from earlier year groups.

Embedding creativity in writing is paramount. Through the CUSP curriculum, creative hooks and stimuli are encouraged – incorporating these alongside ambitious vocabulary, providing excitement and interesting writing lessons and engaged pupils.

Children are encouraged to share their written pieces with their peers, offer feedback on work they have heard read aloud and participate in class discussions with the aim of fostering pupil pride in their work.

Children are given the opportunity to self-assess and peer-assess their writing, this criteria is based on the learning objectives for that unit of work and is part of the teaching sequence that led up to creating an extended piece of writing.

Time to self-edit is built into the lesson sequence. This allows children to edit their work with adult support and independently, learning from their misconceptions to improve their writing.

Spelling

Spelling is taught through the CUSP curriculum. Using the spelling progression document, each year group has a dedicated weekly spelling focus in which children have 3 opportunities to learn and practise their spellings for that week.

Spelling homework is sent home once a week and is linked to the week’s spelling focus.

Impact

At St Mary’s we develop children who are accomplished writers, a skill that ensures they are prepared for their secondary education and later life.

Teaching engaging lessons, we foster a love of writing and an enjoyment of learning.

Through high expectations and challenges, we ensure that every child makes good progress within their written work – providing support to pupils to help achieve this.

Children in St Mary’s are encouraged to have a growth mind-set and develop the skills of perseverance and resilience within their writing.

Through their writing and written work, pupils are given opportunities to develop a deeper awareness – culturally, emotionally, socially and spiritually – whilst becoming accomplished writers.