Intent:

At St Pius X Catholic Primary School we aim for all children to become proficient writers with sound grammatical knowledge and a rich imagination. We believe the children should have the opportunity to practise and develop their writing skills and stamina from a starting point they enjoy. We are dedicated to spoken language underpinning the development of reading and writing and so are passionate about providing language rich environments. Teachers use novels, whole class reading texts and real life writing scenarios to enable pupils to become fully immersed in their writing.

Implementation:

The teaching of writing starts in the Early Years setting with mark making. The children are taught the correct pencil grip and explore making marks in a range of media such as paint, sand and shaving foam. There is continuous provision for mark making in the Early Years setting. There is a high focus on the correct letter formation in Reception and this is key for their cursive writing later in their school life. 

As children develop through the school, they are given opportunities to practise and improve their writing in many different contexts. The basis of our teaching of writing can be found here. Throughout their time at St Pius X children receive ample opportunity to write in a range of genres such as stories, information reports, instructions, myths and legends and newspaper reports. The formal teaching of writing begins at word and sentence level and builds to structuring an extended piece of writing.

We use Jonathon Bond’s toolkit for writing to inspire and support our children as writers. They experience a range of high-quality and thought-provoking texts which are arranged into termly themes. The core texts  provide the basis of our English curriculum and teachers use a wider range of books and text types in addition to these to ensure every pupil has access to a broad and rich range of books.

We recognise that writing is a complicated process and, therefore, in order for children to succeed, our planning provides a range of scaffolds to support their success. These scaffolds include; talk for writing, drama and role play, embedded ICT, writing for a range of purposes and audiences, explicit grammar teaching in context, exposure to high quality texts, visual and language scaffolds as well as the systematic teaching of spelling and handwriting.

Writing Curriculum Map

Impact:

Writing at St Pius X enables our pupils to write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others. Our pupils understand that writing has a purpose and value. St Pius X pupils understand the writing process and the worth of each stage of composition and they feel confident to put pen to paper and write for a range of audiences and purposes.

What do our pupils think?

‘I think our writing lessons are really interesting and fun. We get to make up stories and describe things. My favourite thing we’ve done was writing to Mrs Derbyshire.’ – Isha, Year 5

‘I enjoy doing creative writing in the morning. You get to make up stories using pictures. I like writing outside of school I sometimes write letters to my cousins.’ – Oscar, Year 2