All Saints Junior School

The ability to write with confidence and accuracy is a tool that will support children throughout their education and beyond.  At All Saints, we are committed to working with our children in their journey to achieve this by becoming fluent and independent writers.

During their four years at All Saints, we aim to enable our children to write with a clear point of view that has an impact on the reader.  To do this, the children build a growing bank of ambitious vocabulary, together with appropriate grammar and punctuation, and learn how to clearly articulate and structure their ideas.  Embedded within this is the ability to discuss and share ideas, views and opinions, developing the ability to communicate clearly through speech.  This life skill also has a clear link to the ability to communicate effectively in written form. 

All writing is closely linked to a learning journey led by a driving question (these are shared by each year group and are available on our website under the curriculum tab).  This ensures that the children have a good understanding of the topic driving the writing.   However, to write like an author, children need to find out how established authors achieve their desired impact on the reader – in both fiction and non-fiction text types.  Therefore, our writing is underpinned by high-quality texts which are analysed and discussed before being used to guide the children’s own writing.  Our progression of skills in grammar and punctuation, ensures that all the statutory skills are included within appropriate writing adventures.

Once the children have their author-inspired toolkit, they are ready to write.  They then engage in the full process of creating a text: planning, drafting, writing, proof-reading, evaluating and critique and review.   The celebration of their final text is also very important! During this process, teacher modelling and sharing of each other’s writing is an important part of the learning. 

Alongside this journey, the children also develop their own handwriting so that it is joined, clear and legible. The ability to spell is also important if written work is to be quickly understood.  At All Saints, our teaching of spelling incorporates the National Curriculum Spelling lists for KS2 and is supported by the `No Nonsense` spelling programme.  The use of accurate spelling is tracked through all subjects with a clear opportunity to re-visit phonics patterns for those children who find spelling difficult.

The more we read, the more accomplished writers we become.  Therefore, encouraging our children to read and be exposed to a variety of texts is central to our writing curriculum at All Saints.  Please visit our Vision for Reading and our Reading for Pleasure tab to find out how we aim to do this and inspire our children.

“Writing is for life, not just for school.”