Writing
At Loscoe C of E Primary School and Nursery, we want every child to see themselves as a writer.
Writing gives our children a voice. It enables them to share ideas, tell stories, explain their thinking and communicate with others. From children's very first marks in Nursery through to increasingly sophisticated writing in Year 6, we carefully build the knowledge, vocabulary and skills children need to become confident, independent and purposeful writers.
Our writing curriculum follows the DDAT Writing Spine from Nursery to Year 6, ensuring that children's learning develops progressively as they move through school. The spine brings together handwriting, spelling, dictation, punctuation, grammar, text structure and composition.
Building Writers from the Very Beginning
Writing begins long before children are able to independently write a story.
In Nursery, children develop the physical and language foundations needed to become writers. This includes gross and fine motor development, mark making, listening to sounds, rhyme, oral storytelling and beginning to give meaning to the marks they make.
As children progress through Reception, they develop pencil control and letter formation alongside their phonics. They learn to hear and represent sounds in words, compose sentences orally and begin to write phrases and simple sentences that can be read by others.
This means that from the earliest stages, talk, vocabulary, physical development, phonics and writing work together.
How We Teach Writing
As children progress through the school, writing becomes increasingly sophisticated.
Children develop their understanding of:
- composition and communicating ideas
- vocabulary
- sentence construction
- grammar
- punctuation
- spelling
- handwriting
- text structure and organisation
- planning, drafting, editing and improving writing.
Children also learn to write for different purposes and in different forms. The writing spine includes opportunities for narrative, recounts, instructions, non-chronological reports, poetry and non-fiction, with increasingly sophisticated composition and organisation as children progress through school.
By Years 5 and 6, children are expected to plan, draft and write narratives and non-fiction, organise writing into paragraphs, make deliberate vocabulary choices and evaluate and improve their work. In Year 6, this develops further through editing, integrating dialogue, maintaining consistent tense and using increasingly sophisticated grammatical structures.
Planning, Drafting and Independent Writing
We want our children to understand that great writing develops through a process.
Our English teaching is planned using the DDAT Writing Spine, which identifies the learning that children should develop throughout each year group.
Children have opportunities to build the skills and knowledge they need before applying these independently. Independent writing is completed in our purple writing books, where children draft and edit their work. Children can draw upon previous guided writing, plans and vocabulary resources, while the final piece demonstrates what they can achieve independently. Children also complete a cold write each term.
As children get older, the expectation for independence increases. The Writing Spine specifically develops children's ability to plan, draft, assess, edit and improve their writing.
Dictation
Dictation is an important part of writing at Loscoe.
It gives children opportunities to retrieve previously learned spelling, punctuation and grammatical knowledge and apply it accurately within sentences. Dictation can revisit age-appropriate punctuation, misconceptions identified through English lessons, previous learning and spelling errors or patterns that children need to practise.
The complexity of dictation develops throughout the Writing Spine. Children move from early auditory memory and writing words and phrases in EYFS to writing sentences containing increasingly sophisticated spelling, grammatical and punctuation features throughout Key Stages 1 and 2.
Grammar and Punctuation
Grammar and punctuation are taught progressively so that children can apply them meaningfully to their own writing.
The Writing Spine clearly sequences expectations from children's early awareness of capital letters and full stops through to increasingly sophisticated sentence structures and punctuation in Key Stage 2.
For example, children progress from sentence demarcation and conjunctions in KS1 to features including direct speech, fronted adverbials and possessive apostrophes, before later learning includes relative clauses, parenthesis, colons, semi-colons, dashes and structures appropriate for formal writing.
The important thing is not simply knowing a grammatical term. Children learn how to use their growing grammatical knowledge to make their writing clearer, richer and more effective.
Handwriting
We believe children should be able to write comfortably, fluently and legibly, developing handwriting skills that allow them to concentrate on what they want to say rather than the physical process of writing.
The foundations begin in Nursery through gross and fine motor development, mark making, pencil control and early letter formation.
Throughout EYFS and Key Stage 1, we follow the Little Wandle approach to handwriting, supporting children to develop secure letter formation, appropriate pencil control and increasingly accurate and consistent handwriting.
As children move into Key Stage 2, we follow Excellence in Handwriting by Martin Harvey. This builds on children's earlier skills and supports them to develop greater consistency in letter size, spacing and joins, while increasing the fluency and speed of their handwriting.
As children progress through KS2, our aim is for handwriting to become increasingly fluent, joined, legible and effortless, enabling children to write confidently and efficiently across the curriculum.
Feedback, Editing and Improving
We want children to recognise that making changes is a normal and valuable part of being a writer.
Children may be asked to edit their writing or correct mistakes following discussion with their teacher. Children make these changes in green pen, enabling them to revisit their work and make improvements.
Children also use DDAT child-friendly writing checklists for their year group. These can be used as prompts while writing, updated to reflect children's progress and used to help identify personal next steps. In KS1, adults provide greater scaffolding so that younger children can successfully engage with the process.
Our wider approach to teaching and feedback is built around our 3 Rs:
Recall: What can we remember from previous learning?
Revisit: What skills, errors or misconceptions do we need to return to?
Respond: What have we learnt from today's lesson and what needs to happen next?
Supporting Every Writer
Not every child develops as a writer at the same rate, and our teaching responds carefully to children's individual needs. Our aim is to remove barriers to writing while giving every child the opportunity to experience success, develop independence and see themselves as a writer.
Where children experience difficulty with the physical aspects of writing, appropriate fine and gross motor activities and interventions may be used to strengthen the skills needed for successful writing.
Teachers use assessment and observations of children's learning to identify gaps and misconceptions. Our planning and assessment approach ensures that children who require additional support are identified and that important learning can be revisited, including through our "Do Now Dictation" activities.
Children may be supported through carefully chosen scaffolds and high-quality models. These help children understand what successful writing looks like, organise their ideas, develop vocabulary and sentence structures, and gradually become more confident and independent. Scaffolding is adapted according to individual need so that all children can access the same ambitious learning.
Where appropriate, children can also use Clicker software to support the writing process. This provides an additional way for children to record and develop their ideas when barriers make independent written recording more challenging. Technology is used purposefully alongside high-quality teaching, modelling and adult support.
For spelling, where concerns are identified, support may include communication with families, additional practice, Spelling Zappers in KS2, targeted intervention and further opportunities to revisit Common Exception Words.
Above all, we want children to understand that everyone can be a writer. Support is designed to give children the tools, confidence and strategies they need to participate fully in writing and become increasingly independent.
Assessing Writing
Assessment helps us understand what children can do independently and what they need to learn next.
At Loscoe, we use DDAT Writing Assessment Grids. Teachers review children's writing through moderation at least once each term, discussing evidence and identified pupils to support accurate and consistent judgements about attainment and progress.
Children are actively involved too. Their child-friendly writing checklists help them understand age-appropriate expectations, recognise their progress and begin identifying their own next steps.
Our Writing Journey
From mark making to mastery, writing at Loscoe is a carefully sequenced journey:
Nursery
Mark making • fine motor development • sounds • talk • storytelling
↓
Reception
Letter formation • phonics • words • oral composition • simple sentences
↓
Key Stage 1
Sentence construction • spelling • punctuation • different purposes • rereading and checking
↓
Lower Key Stage 2
Paragraphs • richer vocabulary • increasingly varied grammar • narratives and non-fiction • editing
↓
Upper Key Stage 2
Purpose and audience • cohesion • precise vocabulary • sophisticated grammar and punctuation • drafting and editing • increasing independence
↓
Confident, independent and purposeful writers
Our Writing Promise
At Loscoe, we want our children to:
- enjoy writing and see themselves as writers
- communicate their ideas clearly
- develop a rich and increasingly precise vocabulary
- write confidently for different purposes
- develop secure spelling, grammar and punctuation knowledge
- build fluent and legible handwriting
- use talk and oral composition to develop ideas
- plan and organise their writing
- reread, edit and improve their work
- use feedback positively
- become increasingly independent
- take pride in what they create.
Ultimately, we want our children to leave Loscoe knowing that their words matter and their writing has a purpose.
Our faith can move mountains.
We may be small but together we can make a big difference.