Writing 

We have high expectations of writing across the curriculum and throughout the school. We believe that writing should be meaningful and for a range of purposes. We deliver a creative and engaging curriculum and wherever possible, we encourage children to use and apply their learning in other areas of the curriculum.

We teach children to write in a variety of styles, for a range of audiences. We revisit key learning and build upon it in all areas. We use a wide range of teaching strategies to teach our children to write and teach grammar as a separate lesson where necessary.

We asked our children what helps them to be successful in their writing and developed our whole school approach to writing based on what they said.

We use high quality texts, modelling, guided and shared writing to demonstrate good practice, including high quality examples of children’s work. We provide time for planning, editing and revising and provide writing frames to support the least confident. We give children opportunities to edit and improve using a ‘polishing pen’ to show where improvements have been made. We use success criteria checklists for pupils to self or peer assess against, when appropriate, so they can evaluate effectively. We encourage joined handwriting to support spelling and speed and use drama and hot-seating to help pupils to think about another point of view. We allow children to discuss their writing with their peers and adults, to enable them to generate ideas and make improvements to their writing.

Handwriting

We aim for our pupils to develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters that leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing. Children are taught handwriting both through discrete handwriting sessions and other areas of the curriculum.

By the end of Year 6, pupils will understand the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letter forms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.

Handwriting Policy

Earning a Pen Licence

To write in pen, children need to earn a pen licence which they do by collecting 6 pen stamps.

To earn a stamp, handwriting will show:

• correctly formed upper and lower case letters with correct joins.
• letters which sit on the base line and are consistently sized.
• ascenders and descenders which are parallel and do not touch words on the lines above and below.
• correctly formed capital letters used appropriately
• equal spacing between words.