'There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.' Beatrix Potter

Intent

When children leave our school, we aim for them to be able to write at length in a range of genres, having clearly identified their audience and purpose. We aim to instil a love of writing through quality first teaching, which responds to the needs of all learners in order to ensure they succeed in their writing journey.

Our writing curriculum recognises that many children at our school have low starting points and need to develop their vocabulary. Therefore, vocabulary development and progression drives our teaching of English. Quality texts, and children having access to a range of literary genres, inspire our writing curriculum.

We believe that our children will become able writers through talk, drama, access to quality texts and an understanding of grammar.

We ensure that children continue to improve the quality of their writing, through editing and regular opportunities to write at length, allowing them to practise their skills and develop greater writing stamina.

Progression

We have developed our own progression document for each fiction and non-fiction writing genre to ensure pupils are building on their skills year-on-year. In conjunction with our Grammar progression of skills, this ensures our curriculum is progressive and ambitious, challenging pupils to improve their writing as they move through the school. 

Spelling

The Read Write Inc. Spelling Programme was introduced at St Catherine’s from Years 2 to 6 for the following reasons:
- To raise standards in spelling
- To provide consistency and progression in the teaching of spelling
- To help support children to enable them to be more confident at spelling

Read Write Inc. Spelling is an interactive programme which teaches spellings in a fun and engaging way. Each unit is introduced with a short video. It helps children to learn spellings with common patterns and according to rules. It also helps them to learn the exceptions to these rules.