Curriculum Intent

At St Mary and All Saints CE Primary School, we believe that writing has an important place in education and in society. It is an essential skill and the ability to write with confidence and accuracy is a tool which will support a child through life. Through our teaching of writing, we intend to impart pupils with the knowledge, understanding and skills they need in order to reach their potential as individuals. We aim that our children understand the social functions of writing in order to use different genres of writing appropriately by considering its purpose and matching it to its audience. Furthermore, it is our intent that every child develops a progressive understanding of grammatical conventions, the way in which punctuation aids understanding and how to apply spelling rules. In addition, it is our aim that all children have a joined, legible and increasingly efficient handwriting style.

The teaching of writing within the English curriculum has been carefully considered to enable our pupils to become more confident and creative writers.  We wholeheartedly embrace the National Curriculum’s expectations and are deeply committed to enhancing our students' educational journey with a strong emphasis on writing development. We aim to help our children develop these skills in the following ways:

• introducing and deconstructing a wide variety of model texts, covering a variety of genres
• by exposing and teaching high level vocabulary
• giving children opportunities to write for authentic purposes and across a range of subjects
• ensuring children have opportunities to talk about and plan their writing
• a solid understanding of grammar and ability to use it accurately
• giving children opportunity to evaluate, revise and edit their own work as well as offer feedback on the work of their peers
• to be able to spell, not only the prescribed spelling words but also words connected to the wider curriculum
• take pride in their work and its presentation, including their handwriting

We emphasise the close link between reading and writing, urging our students to harness their reading experiences as inspiration for their own writing endeavours. This approach fosters creative thinking and appreciation for language. 

Our writing curriculum aims to enable pupils: 

• To know, understand, and be able to write in a range of genres and text types. 
• To write for real or imagined purposes. 
• To plan, draft, discuss, revise and edit their own writing, and develop into reflective writers. 
• To know that writing is different from speaking. 
• To write clearly, accurately and coherently using punctuation correctly.
• To recognise that writing should have a clear purpose and audience. 
• To adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences 
• To develop understanding that writing is both essential to thinking, investigating, organising and learning, and enjoyable in its own right. 
• To acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language 
• To make connections between pupils’ reading and writing so that they have clear models for writing. 
• Through reading and writing, develop their powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness. 
• To have fluent and legible handwriting