"You can make anything by writing"

C.S. Lewis

"If you want to change the world, pick up a pen and write."

Martin Luther

Intent

We strive to empower pupils at Linden to love writing and view themselves as writers. We are committed to ensure that pupils have the relevant knowledge and skills to be confident writers and hence become full members of society. Transcriptional skills are taught explicitly from EYFS, where the foundational knowledge begins, to reduce cognitive load. In EYFS, children learn to say, read and write words, phrases and then simple sentences. In KS1 and 2, genres are sequenced in order to consolidate and build on prior knowledge. Genres are revisited with increasingly complex grammatical features. The
consistency in our writing sequence develops pupils’ skills and knowledge in grammar, vocabulary and punctuation as well as knowledge of purpose and audience. Considering both Sherrington’s Quizzing and Kate Jones’ evidence-based research, we know how much working memory can affect writing; to ensure key grammatical knowledge is not lost, there is regular retrieval to embed this knowledge. Both the clear, consistent writing journey and daily retrieval enables children to write confidently and for a range of different purposes.

Our writing curriculum is literature rich. From EYFS to Year 6, carefully chosen and engaging stimuli captivate children’s interest and allow them to develop writing for a range of purposes, viewpoints and audiences. These stimuli engage pupils, gives them a meaningful reason and purpose to write which empowers them to produce the best writing they can. Carefully chosen rich literature forms the majority of the writing stimulus as well as personally relevant, real purposes and audiences. We know that high-quality literature allows pupils to climb into both a characters’ ‘skin’ and the fictitious world in which they
live. This grasps children’s interest and excites them, enabling them to understand why they are writing, whose perspective they are writing from and for whom they are writing. Literature is chosen to give pupils additional opportunities to immerse themselves in the world of the best books written. Reading spines are coherently sequenced so they are appropriately complex in content, plot, characterisation and theme across the school. This reading includes both modern classic and classic literature to enable pupils to develop vocabulary and cultural capital. Our curriculum prepares children for writing tasks – both
academic and ‘real-life’, they will encounter in the next stage of their education and later life.

Handwriting

Below you will find a guide on how to use our Letter Join online resources.

Handwriting Policy

Spelling 

Long Term Writing Plans