The purpose of writing

The programmes of study for writing at key stages 1 and 2 are constructed similarly to those for reading:

• transcription (spelling and handwriting)
• composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing)

It is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these 2 dimensions. In addition, pupils should be taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing. These aspects of writing have been incorporated into the programmes of study for composition.

Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) and understanding the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words. Effective composition involves articulating and communicating ideas, and then organising them coherently for a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Writing also depends on fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting.

Meet Eddie English.

Eddie is part of our Curriculum Crew who is introduced at the start of each Literacy  lesson, providing a visual link to lessons and allows our children to focus on the skills needed in the upcoming tasks.

Eddie is featured in our Writing Knowledge Organisers - allowing the children to revisit and consolidate prior learning as well as acquiring new skills.

2024-2025

Nursery

Reception

We read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and we are learning to form letter shapes. We can begin to use our phonic knowledge to write some sounds we can hear when describing Goldilocks. Goldilocks was cheeky, pretty and naughty!

After ordering the story, 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea', we spoke about what initial sound we could hear in some key words from the story (s- Sophie, t- tiger, m - Mammy, d - Daddy, c - cup, c - cake, b - buns). We used the soundmat to find the initial sound we could hear and then wrote them down, taking extra care with our letter formation. 

Year 1

The Rainbow Fish

In writing, we have been looking at the Rainbow Fish.

In the story, the Rainbow Fish makes the Little Blue Fish very sad by not sharing his scales. We spent some time discussing the way that the Little Blue Fish would have been feeling. We worked together to discuss some different synonyms for 'sad', and as a group we ordered these words from least to most powerful. We decided that 'heartbroken' was the most powerful word to describe how the Little Blue Fish was feeling.

We also used our acting skills to act out how the Little Blue Fish was feeling.

Using our previous work around feelings and the different words for 'sad', we wrote in our books about how the Little Blue Fish was feeling. We used the words that we looked at together last lesson to help us write a thought bubble from the point of view of the Little Blue Fish.

Then, we received a letter from the Little Blue Fish! He told us all about what the Rainbow Fish had done, and asked us to help him by writing a letter to the Rainbow Fish, giving him some advice and telling him how to be a kind friend.

We were more than happy to help, and spent some time writing our own letters to the Rainbow Fish, asking him to be a kind friend and asking him to share his scales with the Little Blue Fish.

The Three Little Pigs

In Year 1, we could not believe our eyes when we came into the classroom and found that it had been completely trashed!! All over the floor we saw straw, sticks and bricks - we decided that we needed to investigate to see what had happened!

After checking the CCTV camera, we saw that it was the Big Bad Wolf that had broken into our classroom and trashed it! We decided that we needed to create a wanted posted to try and catch him!

First, we had to learn about the features of a wanted poster.

After learning about wanted posters and making our own wanted posters to help catch the Big Bad Wolf, we had a letter from the Three Little Pigs. They were so grateful that we had helped them, and wondered if we could help them some more! They needed some instructions on how to make a much stronger stick house for them all to live in.

First we looked at the importance of instructions by instructing our teacher on how to make a jam sandwich. We had to make sure that our instructions were clear and specific, otherwise our teachers would get things wrong! 

After learning about how to give an instruction, we then learned about why it is important that instructions are given in the right order!

We heard that the Big Bad Wolf had stolen the Three Little Pigs' treasure, they had been saving up to build a new house and all of their money had been stolen and hidden in school! The Big Bad Wolf left clues hidden around our school, we had to follow the instructions on the clues in the right order so that we could find the letters that spelled out where the treasure was hidden. If we had followed them in the wrong order, the word would have been jumbled up. We were so excited when we managed to find the treasure!

Next, we worked together to build our own strong, stick houses, so that we would be able to create a good set of instructions for the Three Little Pigs!

Wild

In English, we have been learning about a new story called Wild!

We have been writing a newspaper article all about what had happened in the story. First, we had to look at using a lot of descriptive language to help us with our newspaper article.

Before we began writing our own newspaper articles, we had to look at the features of a newspaper article. We learned that headlines are a very important part of a newspaper article, and spent some time looking at headlines and matching up headlines to the appropriate articles.

Beegu

In Year 1, we can not believe what has happened!

In our courtyard, we found that a spaceship has crash landed! There were lots of clues left around the crash site that we are going to use to conduct an investigation into what has happened!

Year 2

We loved exploring our text 'When the dragons came' by Lynne Moore and Naomi Kefford.   We were shocked when we were left a special delivery of 3 precious dragon eggs to care for one day and even more shocked when they hatched during the half term.  We caught the mummy dragon returning to collect her babies on CCTV and wrote news reports about the event! Take a look...

Year 3

Year 4

"The Nowhere Emporium", by Ross MacKenzie.

Inspired by "The Nowhere Emporium", we wrote alternative prologues for this magical adventure. We included a range of figurative language and tension building techniques to draw the reader in. We then used the Author's Chair to share our fabulous writing.

Year 5

The Night Bus Hero

By

Onjali Q. Rauf

Hector is a bully, a menace and a lost cause. He hates school (especially the teacher's pets and brainiacs), he hates home and he despises the trolley man who lives in the park. As items from famous landmarks around London begin to mysteriously disappear, Hector is thrown head first into solving the crimes leading to him to reassess his actions.

Inspired by the novel, we have written diary entries in the style of Hector, created missing posters  for the missing Paddington Statue as well as completing a travel guide for London.

Year 6

World War One- Letters home from the trenches

As part of our WW1 study, we received special parcels from home (from our wife Elizabeth). We all stepped into the shoes of a WW1 soldier, writing an emotive letter home to our family. We described what life is life like down in the trenches. 

Holes- Louis Sachar

This term Year 6 are reading Holes by Louis Sachar. Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn't green and doesn't have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. Why? The evil warden claims that it's character building, but this is a lie. It's up to Stanley to dig up the truth. Take a look at our fabulous writing so far...

2023-2024

Nursery

Reception

As we are heading in to our last term in Reception we are focusing on independent writing. This is anything from mark making in the shaving foam to using our phonic knowledge to write sentences independently. We are enjoying more and more independent writing jobs and love writing based on our topic.

In Reception we have been exploring fiction and non-fiction texts. We have looked at the story of 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' before exploring our favourite facts about tigers. As part of this we have wrote captions using images from the story and wrote our favourite tiger facts using sounds that we know.

In Reception, we have been using our knowledge of the phonics sounds that we have been taught to record initial and some end sounds in words from the story 'Giraffes Can't Dance'. We looked at the picture and said what we could see and then used Fredtalk to say each of the sounds in the words. We then used the sound mat to find the sounds and wrote them down onto the paper. 

Year 1

The Day the Crayons Quit!

We came into the classroom to discover that our equipment had quit! The pencils, rubbers and even the chairs had quit. They left behind some clues to help us work out what had happened, including letters.

We let the other children in school know what had happened by writing a newspaper report all about the unusual events from the day.

Wild

This half term we have been reading the story 'Wild' by Emily Hughes. The children have immersed themselves fully in the story. They have thought about the characters thoughts and feelings at each part of the story. They contributed to a class debate regarding the events of the story and they wrote fantastic newspaper articles. 

This term we have been reading The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. We have learnt how to use nouns and adjectives to describe the characters and the settings. 

At the end of the story we talked about the theme of friendship throughout the story and we discussed the characteristics of a good friend. We then used these characteristics as ingredients to create a friendship potion. The children then wrote a list of ingredients that they used to make their potions. 

Year 2 

In spring term we have began looking at the the text 'The Tin Forest' by Helen Ward and Wayne Anderson. To begin exploring the text the children created their own tin flowers after observing the front cover of the story. Following from this, we have began to explore the text in more detail. The children have wrote setting descriptions based upon their first impressions of The Tin Forest. The children have also met the main character of the story, they have used their inference skills to write and discuss what they think the character may be thinking or feeling. 

We have been exploring poetry using our quality text as a stimulus.  We used our senses to record descriptive lines for our poems them edited and ordered them before recording our final versions!

Year 3

Year 4

Narnia

We have introduced our new text, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from the Chronicles of Narnia. We began by reading the beginning of the first chapter where Lucy discovers a wardrobe... 

Escape from Pompeii 

We are enjoying reading all about Tranio and his escape from the volcanic eruption in Pompeii. 

We are using this story as a stimulus for our writing activities this term. We have empathised with the character of Tranio to write a thought bubble to describe how he might have felt when Mount Vesuvius was about to erupt!

The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

by Kate DiCamillo 

We are enjoying reading all about Edward Tulane and his miraculous journey! 

We are using this story as a stimulus for our writing activities this term. We have written powerful descriptions using adjectives, similes and prepositional phrases. We have empathised with the character of Edward Tulane to write a thought bubble to describe how he might have felt when he was thrown overboard the ship. We designed persuasive posters to advertise our farm shops.

Year 5

The Explorer

by 

Katherine Rundell

Inspired by our class novel, "The Explorer," we designed and created our own persuasive job advert for an explorer to join in an expedition of the deepest darkest Amazon jungle.

Have you got what it takes to apply?

Lost In Space.

As Commanders of the first manned mission to Mars we have conducted research on the red planet which prepared us for our mission. We then wrote motivational speeches inspiring our crew and team.

The Night Bus Hero

By

Onjali Q. Rauf

Hector is a bully, a menace and a lost cause. He hates school (especially the teacher's pets and brainiacs), he hates home and he despises the trolleyman who lives in the park. As items from famous landmarks around London begin to mysteriously disappear, Hector is thrown head first into solving the crimes leading to him to reassess his actions.

Inspired by the novel we have written diary entries in the style of Hector, created missing posters  for the missing Paddington Statue as well as completing an eye witness report in which we wrote in role.

Year 6

Macbeth

We have been continuing our work based on Macbeth. The children decided whether to write in role as the 'angel' or the 'devil' to persuade Macbeth as to what action he should take. Take a look at our incredible writing... 

This term we are studying Macbeth. After watching episodes 1 and 2, we stepped into the shoes of Macbeth, writing powerful letters to our wife, Lady Macbeth. Take a look at some of our fabulous letters... 

Holes- Louis Sachar

This term Year 6 are reading Holes by Louis Sachar. Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn't green and doesn't have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. Why? The evil warden claims that it's character building, but this is a lie. It's up to Stanley to dig up the truth. Take a look at our fabulous writing so far...

We created non-chronological reports about the yellow spotted lizard...

We wrote newspaper reports about Kissin' Kate's murder of the sheriff...