Writing Curriculum

At St. Luke’s, we aim for every child to leave us as a confident and competent communicator by developing their Speaking and Listening skills to enable effective inference and comprehension. Our children understand that writing is a vital lifelong skill, an art form and a craft that can lead to a positive self-esteem. As a school, we provide our children the fundamental skills in spelling, punctuation and grammar to ensure they are confident to approach any writing opportunity. We provide our children the skills to become reflective and determined thinkers who understand that perseverance and the willingness to alter, correct and adapt their writing will lead to great success and a feeling of pride.

Through a love of reading and listening to stories, we help their creativity and imagination in develop new worlds and characters. Through a varied and progressive curriculum, our children will learn how to use their writing skills to reach and influence various audiences – to persuade, inform, explain, discuss and record facts. All our children are supported to access equal opportunities in writing to help them reach their God given potential.

Writing in Early Years

Within the Early Years setting, children are encouraged from the start to begin making marks on paper. ‘Funky Fingers’ activities encourage the development of fine motor skills and our use of ‘Write Dance’, an approach that uses drama and music, motivates and encourages children to write. Children are encouraged to attempt independent emergent writing and their efforts are valued and praised. They are given opportunities to write independently and are encouraged to do so often, they are also supported in small groups and individually where necessary.

Writing in Key Stages 1 and 2

We have developed the progression documents below to ensure coverage of the National Curriculum:

St Luke's Progression in Grammar, Sentence Structure and Punctuation

St Luke's Progression in Literary Devices

St Luke's Progression in Poetry

St Luke's Progression in Spoken Language

St Luke's Progression in Writing Genres

Texts, videos and pictures for narrative units are carefully chosen to inspire children’s writing and to enable them to acquire a rich and varied vocabulary.

Example of writing from a Year 2 narrative unit.

Non-narrative writing is based on the current topic to give context to the writing and to re-enforce knowledge.

Example of writing from a Year 5 non-narrative unit.

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Spelling is taught both explicitly and in context, following the St Luke's Letters and Sounds programme in EYFS - Year 1 and the Spelling Shed scheme in Year 2 - Year 6.

Handwriting is taught both discretely and as an embedded skill.

Formative assessment is carried out continuously and children are given feedback to move their learning forward. Summative assessments are made termly based on children’s independent writing and judgements are moderated across phases.

Assessments are used to inform planning and to identify children who need extra support to address any gaps in learning or need further challenge.