Writing
At Templenewsam, our aim is to equip pupils with the skills and opportunities needed to write in order for them to feel valued as writers and appreciate others’ writing.
We want our children to be able to express ideas verbally and research the writing of others. We want to enable children to communicate effectively through both the spoken and written word and writing is linked closely to reading and oral storytelling. We provide pupils with the opportunities to write for real audiences which will make writing a meaningful, legitimate activity and will promote confidence and a sense of achievement.
Aims for our children are to:
- Write with confidence, enjoyment and clarity in appropriate genre forms to communicate their meaning to others.
- Understand the phonic and spelling system and use this to write confidently and with increasing accuracy.
- Plan, draft, revise, edit and publish their own writing and learn how to critically appraise their writing and that of others.
- Develop the technical vocabulary with which to discuss writing, i.e. the basics of sentence construction and punctuation and vocabulary associated with grammar.
- To develop fluent and legible handwriting.
- Use a wide range of specific/technical vocabulary appropriate to text type.
In school we follow a whole school writing process covering a range of genres. Each writing process begins with a hook to engage the children and allows them to explore existing texts.
As a whole school we recently did a whole school writing process based on the book “The Midnight Fair” by Gideon Sterer. Every year group created a piece of writing based on the book and the children enjoyed creating a story for the wordless book. Year 6 read their creations to their buddies in Reception.
Handwriting
In school we use the Nelson handwriting scheme from Year 1. Early Years introduce handwriting by using Little Wandle letter formation and by learning the rhymes. Every class teaches handwriting three times a week as well as high expectations for presentation expected in every lesson.
See image on the right for an example of the font.
Spelling
Each year group has a set list of common exception words and rules (outlined in the National Curriculum) that they must learn by the end of each year.
Please find below each year groups list of spellings:
