We expect every child to leave our school as a skilled, confident writer with a deep knowledge of a range of authors and styles of writing from different cultures, backgrounds and history.

To achieve this we have adopted ‘The Write Stuff’ approach to teaching writing. The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing. 

Our approach to writing liberates our learners so that they have a complete set of tools and structures that can be applied to their writing in all contexts. The system arms both teachers and pupils with the knowledge and understanding of what to write and how to write. Grammar, writing techniques and ideas are embedded in every single lesson, and revisited again and again to ensure that pupils become confident and adept writers.

We believe this system of modelling and scaffolding writing is the best way to turn our children into skilled, confident writers. They understand the concepts of building, planning, completing and re-visiting a piece of writing and they are then able to take these structures with them on their journey into secondary school.

The range of texts we use to support our children with their writing has been developed to ensure they experience new ideas and celebrate diversity. Beginning in Reception with books such as Handa’s Surprise and The Proudest Blue, continuing through the school with texts such as Bold Women in Black History, Malala’s Pencil, The Magic Paintbrush, Greta by Greta and The Thinker’s Rap. We also ensure our children experience a mix of traditional and modern, as well as male and female authors.

We have also sought to link our writing to our Science, Geography and History topics wherever possible - but without making links for the sake of it. By doing this, we help our children develop their knowledge in a varied and interesting way and highlight the importance of writing in other subjects as well.