First and foremost, our priority is to teach children to write accurate sentences which is fundamental to their future progress as writers.  With access to quality texts, skilful modelling and time to apply their knowledge, pupils will develop expertise to write for different purposes.  Other vital elements of our writing curriculum include a broad and rich vocabulary, accurate grammar, punctuation and spelling and cursive handwriting.

We have split our English teaching into short focus sessions.  All pupils across the school receive daily teaching in handwriting, spelling, grammar, punctuation and reading.  During these short sessions, pupils are taught key skills and knowledge, relevant to their year group curriculums.  The knowledge they acquire in these sessions is then applied during their longer English lesson.  This is their opportunity to implement and showcase their understanding, demonstrating their ability to apply taught concepts and skills in their everyday work.  We also promote the application of these taught skills in pupils' writing across other areas of the curriculum.  Some of the strategies we use to support the writing process are Pie Corbett Talk for Writing, Jane Considine ‘The Write Stuff’ and ‘Sentence Stacking’ and Alistair Bryce Clegg ‘Writing Prompts’.  

To facilitate high quality teaching and learning, we use a diverse range of educational materials to enhance and deepen teachers’ knowledge and understanding ensuring that children are continually receiving excellent and accurate knowledge.  We use a variety of resources to support our writing curriculum, some are commercially available e.g. Little Wandle, Essential Spelling, Mrs Wordsmith and Teach Handwriting whilst others are bespoke to Caldecote e.g. our Grammar and Punctuation overview and Sentence Progression skills ladder.  The Caldecote Reading Spine is also used inspire writing, ensuring pupils are exposed to a wide variety of genres and writing styles.

For more detailed information, please refer to our Caldecote Writing Curriculum.