As writing is a means of expression, both for personal cognitive purposes and for communicating with others, teaching children to write with confidence, fluency, imagination and accuracy is at the core of our curriculum at St Peter and St Paul. In order to achieve this, we follow Talk for Writing as a whole school process for the teaching of English.

From their first days with us, to their last, the children are immersed in wealth of wonderful writing. Central to the approach is the principle that the children must be able to say what they want to write. We use drama, games and story maps to help the children learn stories, vocabulary and sentence structures. Teachers act as expert models of the writing process in shared writing sessions. Moving through the phases of imitation, innovation and independent application, allows the children to continually cycle through supported and independent writing opportunities to write a range of different story and text types. Talk for Writing, supports the children to develop their confidence in writing and see themselves as authors. 

Writing in Reception

Donaldson Class have been exploring the story of The Little Red Hen. They learned the story using their text map and have been adapting it to make their own stories about the journey. Donaldson have also enjoyed thinking about different recipes. 

 Donaldson Class have also been using text maps to help them learn the Nativity story. 

Writing in Key Stage One

In Key Stage One, we are currently focusing on description. 

Rosen Class, Year 1, have been writing recounts based on a recount of Trixie's day in the story of Knuffle Bunny. They have really enjoyed using this model to write recounts of days from their Christmas break to share with their friends. 

Rosen Class are now moving on to continue their exploration of description with a greater focus on character. They will be looking at the story of Where the Wild Things Are and exploring different ways of describing the Wild Things including: 

- powerful adjectives 

- use of adverbs 

- sentences of three. 

They will also be continuing to develop their use of past tense verbs using the suffix -ed. 

Year 2 have been writing instructions based on a set of instructions on 'How to look after a pet dragon'. They have enjoyed learning the text map and following this model to write their own set of instructions.

Year 2 are now moving on to exploring the story of 'Augustus and his Smile'. Pupils in Year 2 will continue to build on their character description tools and think about how these can be included in the flow of the story. We will be focusing on finding tales and understanding the structure of these stories. They will continue to develop their language skills including:

- powerful adjectives  

- adverbs 

- use of senses 

- sentence openers

They will also continue to develop their use of powerful verbs to describe movement. 

Writing in Key Stage Two 

Year 3 have just finished their first unit looking at portal stories. They are still enjoying their class reader 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' but have had a go at writing their own portal stories based on the model text Elf Road. Coelho Class worked really hard to make sure they used lots of descriptive techniques to describe their portal to their reader. 

Coelho Class are now moving on to look at a 'defeating the monster story'. They are studying the text George and the Dragon and have begun learning their new text map. Coelho Class have been doing some extra work to think about the conjunctions that are used within their story.