Our writing curriculum scaffolds children's journey to become effective writers when they leave us in Year 6.  Children are placed as authors right from the start and the curriculum is designed to give children experience of the entire writing process.   We know that effective writers need to gather ideas, plan, orally rehearse, draft and proofread and edit their writing. Therefore our Writing Cycle is based around developing these skills. 

Across each half term the children have a purpose and audience to write for.  Our writing curriculum is progressive across the year so that children have the opportunity to consolidate writing skills and then build upon them so their writing can be increasingly complex.  The curriculum is also progressive as children move through the school.  When children start Key Stage 2, they have one Chromebook unit per year where they type their writing. 

Each unit is taught through the Writing Cycle.  The teaching cycle begins with an exploration of purpose and audience and then the children unpick examples of writing to discover the ways it is effective. They then gather ideas and plan their own version.  The children draw picture plans to show the compositional route through their writing. Once they have planned what they are going to write, the children orally rehearse.   In these lessons the children have the opportunity to check if their planning makes sense and to practise the sentences they are going to include in their writing which may be new grammatical features for example fronted adverbials.  The next part of the cycle begins with a shared write lesson where the teacher works with the children to compose a piece of writing based on the class plan.  Then the children draft their own writing, following their own plans.  After marking their work, the teacher creates a piece of writing to demonstrate how to proofread the common errors from the writing and edit to improve their writing.  The children then proofread and correct their mistakes before editing to improve their writing.  The iterative process of the Writing Cycle means that as children progress through the term, teachers strategically plan to develop their writing. 

Each term culminates in an independent piece of writing which follows the structure but without an adult modelling the process.  Their independent writing is assessed through the Teacher Assessment Frameworks for each year group and any gaps or misconceptions are then planned to be addressed so that children are ready to continue the writing curriculum for the next unit.   To ensure accuracy, we moderate our writing judgements regularly. 

In Key Stage 1 we have a high focus on developing children’s transcription skills so that they leave Year 2 with a high level of fluency.  We use Letter Join to teach children cursive handwriting from Year 1.