Writing

Our aim is for all children to be excellent communicators both in spoken and written language.

Writing is important because:

Writing gives us a voice.
Writing helps our memory.
Writing helps us to organise our thoughts
Writing improves our thinking.

The challenge with writing is that in terms of the cognitive load it places on the brain, it is one of the single most challenging activities a human being does. At the Quality First Education Trust (Q1E), we intentionally structure how we teach writing to help children to cope with this.

At Q1E, we teach writing in a systematic way

Phonics

We explicitly teach phonics (segmenting) every day in Reception and Year 1. We teach children how to write phonetic sentences with the sounds they have been taught in our systematic Q1E Trust phonics approach

In Reception, phonics lessons are the primary vehicle for writing, where children write about simple images to keep cognitive load low.

Handwriting

We explicitly teach transcription (spelling and handwriting skills) every week across all year groups.

Research shows that children do not reach full handwriting maturity until approximately 14 years old; so regular and structured practice throughout primary school is vital.

When letter formation becomes automatic, the brain can redirect its energy away from the physical mechanics of writing and toward choosing rich vocabulary and content.

Progression Overview: Reception to Year 6

Spelling

We explicitly teach transcription (spelling and handwriting skills) every week across all year groups.

We explicitly teach spelling to enable pupils to become fluent spellers, which promotes fluency and confidence in both their reading and writing while also reducing the cognitive load when working on other aspects of the writing process.

In Year 2, pupils move from phonics to Ready Steady Spell (by Literacy Counts), an impact-proven, research-informed programme. Through consistent routines and spaced retrieval reviews, spelling rules are successfully moved into children’s long-term memory.

Progression Overviews: Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6.

Sentence Structure

We explicitly teach sentence structure.

If writing is building a house, then sentence structure - subject (noun) and action (verb) – are the bricks.

If writing is building a house, then grammar and syntax are the building regulations.

Children need to be taught how to use these correctly, so we dedicate time to practising these things – first for accuracy and then for variation and effect.

Progression Overviews: Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6

Paragraphs

We explicitly teach children how to plan and write paragraphs because this is the skill that turns a series of sentences into a properly structured piece of writing. It is also the skill that is often missed out in explicit teaching. We teach children how to plan paragraphs in both narrative and non-narrative writing, and children are given lots of opportunities to revise and re-draft their paragraphs.

Composition

This is the skill of children putting together the constituent parts of writing that they have been taught and have practised, into a complete piece of writing. Successful writing composition requires a clear understanding of audience and purpose.

We ensure children think about who will read what they have written and the effect they want it to have. Do they want it to: inspire, entertain, inform, explain, instruct, persuade, reflect or clarify thinking.

We develop the children’s composition skills through:

exploration of high-quality texts and models
understanding of audience and purpose
high emphasis on vocabulary
clear progression of sentence structure skills
the development of children as writers, evaluators and editors
understanding features of text types
practice and experimentation with grammatical structures
ensuring their writing reaches its audience.

Our Writing Approach

We have developed a clear structure for our writing process. This process is followed for every written piece and the timescale adapted according to the context of the writing.

If we have taught the children the bricks of writing (transcription), we now must show them what the house looks like before they start trying to build one.

The teacher must show the children the architectural structure (mental representation) of what they are writing, so they can apply their writing skills effectively.

We want the children to know that their writing has a purpose.

We want the children to know that their writing will be read.

English units encompass:

Knowledge: Children will have contextual knowledge about the text or topic before writing.
Clear progression: Units build on previous learning
High-Quality Models: Children in KS2 will analyse age-appropriate Exemplar Texts. All units have lessons where teachers model the written outcome.
A Clear Goal: Every piece of writing has an explicit, targeted outcome.
Structured Planning: Children in KS2 use a dedicated planning framework to map out both their overarching concepts and paragraph-by-paragraph content.
Editing: Children use our structured 'SLC and CUPS' revising and editing tool to evaluate, correct, and polish their work.

We use our revising and editing tool, 'SLC and CUPS', to ensure there is a clear structure for improving the accuracy and effectiveness of writing.

Our Writing Genres

Writing is developed through all writing genres. We ensure we have an ambitious and engaging balance between different genres of writing. This is planned carefully to build up grammatical structures, organisation and formality of the language. We delay teaching some text types as they are more complex or revisit those which need more practice in multiple contexts.

Our whole school progression overview of writing shows the full coverage for each aspect of writing from Nursery to Year 6.

We have a clear progression in the genres of writing children experience to ensure a rich and varied curriculum with an appropriate range of narrative, non-narrative and poetry writing each year. It is shown alongside the text or stimulus for writing in our year overviews.

Q1E English Year Group Overviews

EYFS, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6

Narrative

Story-telling and story writing are key elements in every year group. Different story types are built into our curriculum. These include common themes and structures of story including overcoming the monster, quest, voyage and return, comedy and tragedy.

Non Narrative

Ensuring a clear purpose for writing means that for non-narrative writing there may be a clear link to other curriculum areas. Equally, this may be stimulated by a particular aspect of a class reading text.

You can find further detail about the progression of each non-narrative style here:

Poetry

Each year group have an engaging and diverse poetry curriculum with a range of classic and contemporary poets and poetry. Writing poetry is developed through exposure to the wide variety of styles and forms matched to specific year groups.

We aim for children to write creatively through extensive exploration of ideas, crafting language in order to express ideas in original ways through their own poetry.

Our poetry progression shows how types of poetry are built up through the curriculum.