‘Children love writing when they have something to write about!’

Intent

At Croft Infant School, we want our children to leave the Infant phase of their education able to;

• develop confidence and enjoyment in all areas of English.
• compose sentences orally and then write them down
• spell correctly the common exception words
• make phonetically plausible attempts at unknown words
• form individual letters correctly

We recognise that developing a child’s Speaking and Listening underpins their ability to generate ideas for writing. The best way to develop children’s writing skills is to read a lot, talk a lot and experience new things.

Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription:

• phonics
• spelling quickly
• word structure
• spelling structure
• organising ideas into a sequence

Writing also depends on children’s ability fluent and legible handwriting – more information can be found on the handwriting page.

Implementation

In EYFS children begin their writing journey by: learning stories with actions, retelling stories using puppets, small world characters and props.

Care and consideration is given to pre-writing skills. Children are supported to explore the writing areas and the wide range of age and stage appropriate equipment available for mark making. Children are given support to their developing gross and fine skills through a mixture of continuous provision and adult led activities.

Children quickly learn to write their name through daily practise. Children follow our handwriting scheme to ensure children learn the correct letter formation from the onset.

Adults will model writing strategies, orally composing a sentence and demonstrating how to apply phonic skills to write words. Adults model and support children writing for a purpose within the provision and there are regular whole class and small group writing sessions and opportunities.

Children collect significant pieces of writing to demonstrate their growing skills throughout the year in the Learning Journey’s. Writing is displayed in the classroom to celebrate children’s achievements.

In Key Stage One children continue to access the writing environment with further age and stage appropriate materials during continuous provision supported by adults. The teaching of writing skills takes place during English inputs and is modelled during topic inputs. Children are given the opportunity to practice their writing skills both in small adult led teaching groups and independent opportunities within Continuous Provision time. Children are encouraged to access specific Rainbow Challenges linked to writing independently. Writing is planned within other curriculum areas to ensure the children have a purpose.

There is a clear progression of the skills and knowledge to be taught from EYFS to KS1 in a long term plan which covers a mixture or fiction, non-fiction and poetry opportunities. The progression of what is expected is clear to ensure children are remembering and building on previous experiences.   Independent writing takes place at the end of an English unit where the children are encouraged to demonstrate their understanding by applying it in a range of different genres.  Children in Key Stage One have an English book which will showcase their development throughout the year. Writing is also displayed to celebrate and promote children’s achievements.

Impact

At Croft Infant School children of all abilities will be able to succeed in writing because learning will be appropriately scaffolded. Children will have had exposure to a vocabulary rich environment which they will be able to utilise in their own writing for different purposes. Children will be able write their ideas down fluently on paper with accurate word and spelling structures. Their writing will be presented clearly and with pride.