Writing

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
- John Keating

At Hurworth Primary, our aim is for all children to leave school being able to write with confidence and accuracy for a variety of audiences and purposes whilst developing their own authentic voice and a love of writing. Our curriculum will help children to develop the skills and knowledge to help them to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language. We aim to equip the children with the writing skills to become lifelong learners.

The aim of our writing curriculum is to turn enthusiastic readers into writers who can express their thoughts and ideas throughout a range of genres. Our children are immersed in a breadth of high-quality literature, visual and digital texts, and these are used to inspire writing. Through close links with our reading curriculum, we aim to use these texts to encourage the children to develop culturally, emotionally, socially and spiritually. Texts are chosen to enhance creativity and often make links to the children’s interests and our wider curriculum areas where appropriate. Meaningful opportunities are provided for children to write for real purposes and audiences, giving them the chance to respond to writing as a reader. We encourage children’s creativity and want to broaden their imaginations by taking them to fantasy worlds, providing language-rich environments and giving them real-life experiences.

We aim to develop children’s understanding of the craft of writing by engaging meaningfully with professional authors and discussing their processes and immersing children in the process of writing authentically through modelling. We want our children to be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word, applying the essential skills of handwriting, spelling, grammar and punctuation to their writing. These skills are embedded in context where possible and consolidated through discrete lessons where necessary.

At Hurworth Primary, children develop their skills of planning, drafting, proof-reading, editing and improving writing before publishing quality pieces that they have pride in, and which have a clear form, audience and purpose. We set high expectations for all of our children to take pride in their work across the curriculum using their writing skills. Our children produce high-quality writing and are able articulate where they need to edit or improve their work and discuss the reasons behind their language and vocabulary choices. We know that writing is a process, and we celebrate each step of the process within our writing lessons.

Each year we celebrate writing across the school through whole-school texts or writing initiatives. We encourage children to work together across year groups to gather and share ideas, creating a real audience for their writing and encouraging the children to become genuine authors. The children also have the opportunity to share their imaginative and creative ideas through a half-termly ‘Free Write Friday’. On each Free Write Friday, the children take charge of the audience, purpose and form of their writing and develop and present this however they would like.

Our Intent for Writing

Our aim is that our children want to write and know how to write. Good writing gives children a voice to share their ideas with the world. Writing is a skill which is vital for children throughout their schooling and their life beyond. We want our children to become confident and capable writers who enjoy writing, can write for a variety of audiences and purposes and are able to apply their skills across the curriculum. We want the children to move onto secondary school with the skills required to succeed in their education and that will support them throughout their lives.

At Hurworth, we appreciate that writing is a complicated and intricate process, so we ensure that:

1. The key skills for writing (handwriting, phonics/spelling, grammar and punctuation) are taught systematically and embedded across the curriculum.

2. High-quality literature is at the heart of our curriculum across the school. We believe that a well-chosen text will provide the rich language models and structures that children need to understand how writing works and the effect it can have on a reader.

3. Children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 will become confident and age-appropriate writers, applying the skills learnt through our systematic synthetic phonics scheme and learning to write with a cursive script.

4. From the start of our school, children develop the skill of re-reading their work to ensure it makes sense. From Year 2 upwards, this is developed further through whole class feedback sessions where the children are encouraged to edit and improve their drafted work and then publish it for an audience in their writing books.

5. Over the course of their school career, children are exposed to writing for a variety of purposes and audiences, using styles in a range of narrative and non-narrative forms.

Writing Curriculum Overviews by Year Group