"IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD, PICK UP YOUR PEN AND WRITE." -MARTIN LUTHER
INTENT
At St.Finian's our aim is to create a positive writing culture that enables pupils to become confident and fluent writers. We believe that writing is a gateway to creativity, communication, and lifelong learning. Our curriculum is thoughtfully designed to foster a deep, enduring love of writing in every child, while equipping them with the skills they need to flourish across all areas of learning, from Reception through to Year 6. We recognise that writing emerges through quality talk, facilitated through emersion in a rich language environment, beginning from the foundation years.
Guided by the Department for Education’s new Writing Framework (July 2025), we place strong emphasis on both transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (developing and shaping ideas with clarity and purpose). Our approach recognises that writing is cognitively demanding and supports children in building fluency, confidence, and independence in a carefully sequenced way.
Our approach enables pupils to deepen their understanding of sentence construction, develop a rich and varied vocabulary, and apply grammatical knowledge through consistent and engaging practice.
At St Finian’s, we are proud to cultivate a writing culture where children are celebrated for their voice, take pride in their work, and learn to adapt their language and style for a wide range of contexts, purposes, and audiences. Through authentic writing opportunities, high-quality modelling, and purposeful talk (oracy), we aim for every child to develop the skills—and the joy—that come with being a confident writer.
By placing Christ at the centre of our mission, our writing curriculum reflects the belief that words can build understanding, connection, and compassion—empowering children to live life to the full.
iMPLEMENTATion
Our writing curriculum is delivered through a wide range of engaging texts, visual literacy and cross curricular opportunities. Children immerse themselves in the text type and explore an author’s use of vocabulary and sentence structure and its impact on themselves as readers. They use this to inform their own writing. Our writing curriculum equips children with a complete set of tools and structures that can be applied to their writing in all contexts. The system provides 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 through spaced retrieval to embed this learning and ensure that pupils become confident and adept writers.
Composition
We recognise that the journey to becoming a fluent writer follows distinct stages and we teach and embed these in lessons. The foundations of writing - handwriting, spelling and sentence structure, are prioritised over writing at length and pupils move towards sequences of sentences and broader writing skills when they are ready. Pupils orally compose sentences as the first stage in the writing process; this supports their understanding of sentence structure. All writing is made up of sentences. Through the teaching of grammar, children learn to convey meaning.
At St Finian's, pupils have opportunities to immerse themselves in a range of high-quality text types to inspire their own writing. Writing is taught though a step by step process.
- Planning
- Drafting
- Revising
- Editing
- Sharing
Transcription
Handwriting and spelling are crucial foundations for writing. Fluency in both underpins children’s success in writing, as it frees up their working memory to learn progressively more complex writing skills (vocabulary, grammar and punctuation) to become independent, cohesive and purposeful writers.
Spelling
To support the delivery of our spelling curriculum, we use Oak Academy for children in Years 2 - 6. Children in Year 1 are taught spelling through phonics using our Dfe Accredited scheme ‘A Flying Start.’
Handwriting
To support the delivery of the handwriting curriculum, we use Nelson Handwriting across the school.
Children are taught to hold a pencil comfortably using a tripod grip from the beginning of EYFS. They are also introduced to letter formation through our Dfe Accredited phonics scheme ‘A Flying Start’.
Nelson Handwriting ensures the children begin learning to join their handwriting from Year 2 and have developed their own individual style by the time they leave school in Year 6.
IMPACT
Through inspirational visual and written texts, children are inspired to write creatively, accurately and purposefully. By the time that children leave primary school, our aims are as follows:
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Children will have a life long love of writing alongside the skills required to write for the many purposes that will be required of them as they journey into adulthood.
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Children will be able to clearly, accurately and coherently write for a range of purposes: entertain, inform, persuade and discuss.
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Children will use rich and varied vocabulary effectively that is chosen specifically with the audience and purpose of the text in mind.
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Children's stamina for writing will increase as they journey through primary school to keep up with the expectations of the National Curriculum.
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Children will be proud of their writing and confident to share it with others.
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Children will be well-prepared for the secondary curriculum.
Assessment
Children’s writing is quality marked after every Sentence Stacking lesson with a focus on punctuation, spellings, sentence structure and editing to improve. Through explicitly teaching responding to marking, children in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 have a clear understanding of the marking codes which are used and how they edit in response to them. This regular marking is also used to identify misconceptions, for example the spelling of homophones / use of apostrophes, which are addressed in subsequent lessons before the misconceptions become embedded.
Marking Codes
From Year 2 onwards, children produce an idependent piece of writing at the end of every unit of work. These independent pieces are used to inform planning of subsequent units and to identify targets. Additionally, at three formal assessment points throughout the year, these pieces of writing are used to assess children's progress against the objectives in the National Curriculum for writing. At St Finian's, we assess writing using the West Berkshire Assessment Grids. Regular moderation of writing within school, with other schools and on local authority moderation meetings ensures that teachers are making secure judgements against children’s independent writing.
Following the formal assessments, teachers identify targets for learners which inform planning and teaching and are communicated to children, and parents at parents' evenings and in end of year reports.