Nafferton Primary School

Writing at Nafferton

At Nafferton, English lies at the heart of our curriculum and is embedded throughout. Through a cross-curricular writing approach, we spark children’s imaginations and create enthusiasm for writing. During children’s Nafferton Journey, we open their eyes to a wealth of exciting and purposeful writing opportunities which enable them to practise the fundamental skills of English through a cohesive and progressive writing curriculum. We recognise that each child has their own starting point on entry to every year group and progress is measured in line with these starting points to ensure that every child can celebrate success. By the time children end their Nafferton Journey, they are primary literate and are confident and skilled writers within their ability range.

Writing in EYFS:

Children in Foundation are immersed into a world of imagination from the moment they start school. Within the classroom setting, marking making opportunities are encouraged and provided daily both outside and indoors. At Nafferton, we place a high emphasis on the development of children’s fine motor skills before they begin letter formation and formal writing. Children partake in daily ‘Dough Disco’ to strengthen the muscles in their hands as well as ‘Squiggle’ which enhances their coordination; these prerequisites are essential for young writers. Over the course of the year, children learn how to form letters in printing script, write words, phrases and captions before progressing onto sentence writing. Furthermore, book talk is always present and facilitated by staff, to provide children with excitement for writing and the foundations for story-telling. Alongside this, ‘Helicopter Stories’ are used and these enable children to express their creativity by inventing their own stories which provides them with the confidence to write and record their ideas onto paper.

Writing in Key Stage One & Two:

Each term, children in Key Stage One and Two participate in whole-school topics. These topics provide many exciting writing opportunities with high quality book focuses which enable a range of genres to be studied in imaginative ways thus inspiring children to write.

Writing skills are taught daily and units are segmented to allow teachers and children to analyse genres and identify text features before planning, modelling and writing. Grammar is taught explicitly and is linked to the genre which is being taught; this ensures it is relevant and can be applied within writing. Purposeful writing opportunities are facilitated through our thematic approach to inspire children to write. Some of these include:

• Writing to the Brazilian Embassy about the effects of deforestation
• Writing a review about Nafferton Primary School for the Parliamentary Review
• Partaking in Water Explorers
• Job applications for positions in school e.g. house captains, play buddies, librarians
• Writing to authors and creating new characters for books
• Responding to letters from fairy-tale characters
• Writing ‘thank-you letters’ after attending a school trip
• Creating invitations and posters for school events
• Writing debate speeches

Furthermore, children are exposed to a wealth of poetry during their time at Nafferton and each year they study and learn three new poems, providing them with a library of contemporary, classic and thematic poems by the time their Nafferton Journey ends.

Spelling:

Children in EYFS and Key Stage One learn how to spell through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which ensures full curriculum coverage. Using the National Curriculum spelling rules and guidance, we have curated our own approach to spelling for children in Key Stage Two through an investigative approach.