Writing
Here at Primrose Hill, our children enjoy writing.
At Primrose Hill Primary School, we recognise that writing is integral to all aspects of life and our curriculum provision strives to ensure that children develop a lifelong, healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards writing. The skill of writing enables pupils to communicate with themselves and others while documenting and conveying their knowledge and ideas. Writing skills underpin most elements of the school curriculum and is an essential life-skill.
Writing
Across KS1 and KS2, the children develop writing skills daily using a range of stimuli – books, video clips, first hand experiences, drama, debate. These stimuli are often linked to other aspects of the curriculum or the class novel, allowing key vocabulary to be embedded. We ensure that there are a range of different writing genres taught – e.g. stories, reports, letters, diaries, explanations. During each unit, children explore the specific features of each genre through looking at good examples of writing, and improving other examples before drafting their own work.
Grammar and Punctuation
Grammar is taught both discretely as a separate skill weekly, and also alongside extended writing to enable children to use and apply their knowledge. Children are taught about different word groups, such as adjectives, nouns, prepositions, adverbs etc and the full range of punctuation to enhance their writing and make the meaning clear.
Spelling
Spelling is also taught weekly. We build on the early phonics work in KS1 and introduce prefixes and suffixes to build new longer words around the root. In addition to the taught spelling patterns and rules, children learn common exception words each year. You can find the attachments for Y1-2, Y3-4, Y5-6 word lists on the right.
Children from Y2-6 have their own Spellzone accounts and should be practising weekly word lists at least twice a week. They will also undertake a spelling ability test every half term to track progress.
Handwriting
Handwriting is taught daily. In the younger years, we focus on developing strength in the hand, wrist and fingers so that children can hold their pencil in the correct tripod grip. All children also practise letter formation daily. We use a continuous cursive script. This link below will take you to a set of animations showing how to write each letter.
Click the link on the right to see the attached Writing plan to find out what is taught term by term and year by year for each strand of English: writing genres, grammar, punctuation, spelling and handwriting.
