Writing
"You can make anything by writing." (C.S. Lewis)
At Hillcroft, we intend for every child to be equipped with high standards of writing skills required for life at, and beyond school; they will be future-proof, allowing them to meet and exceed the modern-day expectation. Teaching is sequenced progressively throughout the years, as well as within each year, to ensure that skills are being re-visited, embedded and built upon. We ensure that all children are given a clear and motivational purpose to their writing, allowing them to practise the skills needed for different audiences.
We have purposefully tailored our curriculum to meet the needs of our local curriculum and trends across the school; closing the vocabulary gap and embedding a solid understanding of sentence composition. We encourage the use of exciting vocabulary by using high quality stories and texts that children can draw upon to create their own. Children are taught the correct use of grammar, with the correct terminology, to apply to their writing.
Throughout the school - from Nursery to Year 6 - children are taught following the National Curriculum, learning to write creatively using The Write Stuff approach. In lessons, children have the opportunity to discuss and share vocabulary and observe the process of writing a specific sentence type or technique through high-quality teacher modelling. Children then write their own sentence using the model as support and understand that these sentences build a paragraph. After this sequence of lessons, the children plan and write their own story or non-fiction text, applying the knowledge and vocabulary they have learnt. The final part is to reflect on their writing, allowing time for them to proofread for errors and edit for improvement.
Please find more information about The Write Stuff here
Pupil Voice:
We like thinking of different words. We use our sound mats to help spell words. Ruby, EYFS
I like that I get to write our own sentences and make it up and do our own. My favourite piece was about the Great Fire of London.
Ava, Year 2
I like how you can use your imagination and really explore ideas. I enjoyed writing a biography of a pharaoh.
Prathiksh, Year 5
I like using my imagination and creating my own ideas. I enjoyed writing my own escape story. I have improved my choice of adjectives and description.
Finnley, Year 6
My favourite writing has been Stone Age Boy because I like the Stone Age and the story is really funny. I’m proud that my writing is really neat.
Bradley, Year 3
Progression of Skills and Knowledge:
At Hillcroft Primary School, we follow the National Curriculum. From this, we ensure that skills and knowledge are taught in the appropriate year groups to ensure progression and sequencing.
Across Early Years, to ensure progression from the newly published Early Years Framework into KS1, we follow the revised and updated July 2021 version of Development Matters. In our Nursery, children are aged three and four, and so the progression maps show the objectives related to Three and Four year-old objectives. However, some children join after just turning three, therefore, with these children and following rigorous assessment of starting points, it may be deemed necessary to look at the Birth to Three objectives too.
For more information on this, please see the Nursery and Reception year group pages.
Below are links to our Progression of Skills and Knowledge documents.
