Writing

At St John’s Primary School, we believe that English is a fundamental life skill. The study of English develops children’s ability to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama, as well as of non-fiction and media texts. 

All of our writing is driven through a love and exploration of high quality texts. To develop writing we start in Nursery with Story Dough, this moves into Drawing Club in Reception and Curious Quest in Year 1. In Years 2-6 we use a 2-3 week writing cycle. This starts with a hook which is used to engage children and create excitement and motivation for writing. Texts are read and re-read, and children learn how to become authors themselves, finally publishing their work to be sent home and displayed in their classrooms. Our class books are a pinnacle aspect of our classrooms, children are exposed to daily story time, where they explore an exciting and enticing book. The class book becomes the basis of our writing cycles within our immersive writing curriculum! 

Teachers model handwriting and focus on letter formation, correct joins, cursive handwriting and fluency. Direct instruction from teachers include modelling the handwriting phase from Read, Write Inc. Following this, children have a daily transcription session where teachers model sentences which contain spelling words from the spelling rule taught that week. Children have time to independently practice their transcription skills.  

Children are tested weekly on their spellings, which they explore and rehearse during transription lessons. Additionally, our children are provided with Spelling Shed access, where they can interact with fun games to help them with their spellings. Our children also have dedicated time on class to access this platform as well as school wide Spelling Shed competitions!

We believe fundamentally that children are wired to thrive on repetition, and that this repetition feeds their confidence and ability to succeed.