Intent

At Northbourne, we recognise that competence in writing is vital for the development of children’s communication skills; a crucial ingredient for progress in other subject areas particularly through our Topic led approach to learning. Being able to write, offers the opportunity to store information, communicate with each other and to reflect and record creative ideas. When a child becomes a skilled writer, they understand the characteristics of writing’s many forms and are able to adapt their writing to suit a wide range of purposes both formal and informal. Writing is incorporated into our curriculum through our thematic approach to learning. This approach enables our children to present their learning of curriculum knowledge through a variety of writing tasks and genres, while also ensuring they have a clear understanding of the ‘purpose for writing.’

Implementation

At Northbourne writing is at the heart of our school. Writing is taught across all areas of the curriculum and plays a key role in the children’s progression of learning as they move through the school. Writing will be seen across all age groups in a variety of forms ensuring that the children gain an in depth and wide understanding of what writing is and how to gain a passion and love for writing from an early age.

Together the teachers at Northbourne have planned a whole school approach to writing, taking into consideration the skills and knowledge required in each year group the teachers have created a progressive and consistent approach to writing across the school with high expectations for writing for pleasure to enable our children to develop their communication skills in a creative and engaging way.

Through our Topic approach to learning, we ensure that writing is covered across all areas of the curriculum, including in maths and RE where possible; allowing our children to make strong connections to all of their subjects as they develop on their writing journey.

In EYFS and KS1, writing begins alongside the children’s Little Wandle phonics programme enabling the children to develop their writing stamina and skills as early as possible. A strong focus on cross-curricular writing allows the children to develop a passion for writing. The teachers will use a variety of schemes and resources to plan such as Pie Corbett, The Write Stuff and Literacy Shed allowing the children to learn the key building blocks of writing in a fun and engaging way.

In KS2, writing continues to play a key role across all subject areas. Children will develop their SPAG skills through the No Nonsense spelling scheme, this consistent approach across KS2 enables the children to learn in familiar way and ensures that the key writing skills are being taught across the year groups in a consistent and time appropriate manner. Teachers will plan writing and SPAG lessons using a variety of

schemes including Literacy Shed, The Write Stuff and Vocabulary Ninja to ensure that the children are exposed to as much ‘quality’ writing resources as possible across all subjects.

Impact

Northbourne’s writing curriculum is designed to create a deep understanding of the fundamental building blocks of writing and in turn, a passion, and a real love for writing from the children and adults in the school. We aim for all children to make progress in writing at all stages of their learning journey. The children at Northbourne should be able to aim to be creative writers with a love for the written form of the English language in all areas of their learning.