Intent

At Farsley Springbank Primary School, our intent is to nurture confident, imaginative and capable writers who can express themselves with clarity and purpose. We aim to inspire a love of writing through engaging lessons rooted in rich, high-quality texts and meaningful topics that reflect our diverse world. By exploring language, structure and style, children learn to communicate effectively and creatively, taking pride in crafting pieces that reflect their unique voices.

Our writing curriculum is driven by our six key Curriculum Drivers — Independence, Determination, Curiosity, Risk-taking, Collaboration, and Respect — which underpin all that we do.

• Independence: Children are encouraged to take ownership of their writing, making choices about structure, vocabulary and style. Through drafting, editing and self-evaluation, they become reflective, autonomous writers who understand their own creative process.
• Determination: Writing can be challenging, and we nurture perseverance through sustained writing projects and high expectations. Children learn to embrace feedback, refine their work, and take pride in producing writing they are proud of.
• Curiosity: Through the exploration of a range of differing texts, authors and cultures, children ask questions, make connections, and develop curiosity about language and the world around them. This curiosity drives their imagination and deepens their understanding of purpose and audience.
• Risk-taking: We encourage children to experiment with new ideas, ambitious vocabulary across a range of genres. By taking creative risks, they build confidence and learn that mistakes are part of growth and improvement.
• Collaboration: Writing is celebrated as a shared journey. Children discuss ideas, give and receive constructive feedback, work together to create example texts and share their writing with peers — developing communication and teamwork skills along the way.
• Respect: Children learn to value the opinions, stories and voices of others, both within literature and among their peers. They celebrate diversity through writing that explores different perspectives and shows empathy and understanding.

Celebration of writing is central to our vision of every child seeing themselves as an author. Pupils are given opportunities to share their writing, display and publish their work and connect with a variety of texts to understand writing as a meaningful and rewarding craft.

By immersing children in the world of writing and linking imagination with skill, we empower them to express themselves with confidence, creativity and purpose — embodying our school values of being Courageous, Kind and Curious.

Implementation

The focus for our writing is to produce engaging lessons based around the national curriculum, using engaging, high-quality texts and topics in order to nurture confident, imaginative and capable writers.

By using a text or topic as a stimulus, we are able to provide the children with inspiration and purpose within their writing. Children are challenged in terms of their vocabulary, grammar and punctuation to create pieces of writing of which they can be proud.

EYFS

In order to reach the Early Learning Goal in writing by the end of Reception, the children need to;

- Write recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed

- Spell words by identifying sounds in them and representing the sounds with a letter or letters

- Write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.

Children in Reception will learn to do this through: -

• Daily phonics lessons
• Dough Disco to develop fine-motor skills
• Flipper Flappers to develop gross-motor skills
• Writing opportunities in continuous provision
• Gross and fine motor opportunities in continuous provision
• Half-termly ‘Talk for Writing’ units
• Reciting nursery rhymes and poems
• The daily promotion of speaking and listening opportunities by staff

Year 1

In Year 1, children will build upon those skills learnt in Reception and will aim to reach the expected level of writing according to the National Curriculum.

Children in Year 1 will learn to do this through: -

• Daily phonics lessons which incorporate sentence level writing and an extended piece each week
• Daily handwriting lessons
• Explicit teaching of spelling rules, punctuation and grammar
• Opportunities for writing in continuous provision and through weekly challenges
• From Spring term onwards, units of carefully planned writing linked to texts or topics

Years 2 - 6

In Years 2 – 6, children will be taught to see themselves as authors and understand writing as a process which is not necessarily linear. Children will continue to apply and revise key structural concepts taught at EYFS and Year 1 with a greater focus on building to extended pieces. This will be done through a series of carefully structured lessons. These lessons will be part of a writing unit that will be planned across a two-to-three week period, allowing the children to build skills and ultimately apply them to an extended piece.

This will be achieved by;

• Experiencing high quality examples of texts
• Orally rehearsing their ideas
• Developing vocabulary
• Developing the stamina required for extended writing
• Learning, practicing and refining their handwriting style
• Developing spelling, punctuation and grammar knowledge
• Editing and revising to improve their work

It is hugely important that adults:

• Model the act of writing
• Model the act of editing and improving
• Provide feedback to children (orally where possible)