WRITING AT ST LUKE'S

What do we want to achieve?

Rationale: Writing is a fundamental skill and is integral to all aspects of life within education and society. Living in the digital age has made literacy even more important. We understand that writing provides children with a vehicle to express who they are as people and to actively engage in daily life. Writing makes children’s thinking and learning visible and permanent. It provides children with opportunities to explain and refine their ideas to others and themselves. 

With this in mind, at St Luke’s we endeavour to ensure that children develop a healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards writing that will stay with them.

Ambition: At St Luke’s, we strive to give our children the best start in establishing secure foundations in writing. We aim to deliver a writing curriculum that helps children develop their written communication and imagination to become life-longer learners. We endeavour to equip pupils with the basic skills they need to articulate their thoughts and emotions across the curriculum and write for a range of audiences and purposes using the appropriate language, grammar and tone. Understanding the critical links between reading and writing, our primary intent is to create avid readers which we believe is the foundation for any writer. This is encouraged through a set of core texts used within each year group as stimuli for writing.

It is our intention that by the end of their primary education, all of our pupils will be able to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas effectively and with a developed awareness for purpose and audience. In order to achieve this, our writing curriculum starts in our Early Years where pupils learn the foundation skills of writing and progresses right through to Year 6. Across KS1 and KS2 pupils encounter high-quality writing opportunities that are engaging, enjoyable and purposeful. Using real-life experiences and challenging texts, we provide meaningful opportunities to write for real purposes and audiences within writing lessons and throughout the curriculum. 

The objectives of the National Curriculum are closely followed to ensure that the skills learnt in spelling, punctuation and grammar are embedded and transferred into writing. Lessons are planned so that skills are taught, embedded, revisited and then developed in a sequential way, which promotes learning and retention of knowledge and skills.

Spelling rules are taught explicitly using the Puprple Mash Scheme and these are applied throughout the curriculum. There is an expectation that children will spend time at home learning their spellings too. See our Spelling page for more detail.

Year groups have a yearly overview of the writing genres, both narrative and non-fiction, that they will learn. These are planned to ensure correct coverage of the key genres and enable pupils to build on skills from year to year embedding their knowledge. Units will take between two and four weeks to complete, and the outcome of each unit will be used to assess the pupil’s skills against the agreed success criteria. 

In line with the aims of the National Curriculum, at St Luke’s C of E Primary School, we ensure that all pupils:

• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing.

The aim of our English curriculum is to deliver a curriculum which is accessible to all and that will maximise the outcomes for every child so that they know more, remember more and understand more. As a result of this our intentions are that our pupils will:

• Write for a purpose and know that writing is essential to everyday life, as a means of expression and communication.
• See themselves as real writers and take ownership of their writing.
• Be able to apply their grammatical knowledge in writing across all areas of the curriculum.
• Write with fluency and legibility and eventually with speed.
• Compose sentences accurately by articulating and composing ideas and organising them coherently for the reader.
• See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process.

What does writing look like at St Luke’s?

CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED

Have a look on Twitter at the fantastic writing going on at St Luke's: #Stlukesburywriting