English Writing

Why teach writing?

At Bude Primary Infants we aim for all of our children to be able to write independently in a variety of genres and for a range of purposes with fluency, accuracy and enjoyment.  We believe children should understand from an early age that their writing needs to be accurate, legible and set out in an appropriate way.   It is our hope for them that they will learn to explore and immerse themselves in the writing process while being creative, see the value of it and for them to leave us as confident, accomplished writers.

How we teach writing

Our early stages of learning to write is closely linked to our synthetic phonics programme called ‘Read Write Inc’ produced by Ruth Miskin. This is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words. As part of this, children have daily phonics sessions is small groups where they participate in speaking, listening and writing activities that are matched to their developing needs. We then draw upon these skills and work carefully to reinforce links between the RWI lesson and embed the skills within the wider curriculum.

We use the RWI phonics programme to teach our children to read, write and spell. As the children progress beyond the programme they move onto the Read Write Inc. spelling programme which teaches the fundamentals of spelling built upon the phonic knowledge already learnt.

Through our cross curricular approach to opportunities for writing are presented so that a wide range of genres are covered and experienced. We teach writing using the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach which consists of three key stages. Imitation, Innovation and Invention. Through creativity and exploration, modelling and passion we make every writing lesson exciting and engaging.

EYFS writing

In EYFS we also use Read, Write Inc to learn sounds and to build words through Fred talk. We do "Finger Fit" every day which is something we have developed to build fine motor and writing skills. We set a modelled task linked to our key text or topic which involves scissor skills, gluing, craft and then writing linked to it. This develops skills quickly for independent writing which we encourage throughout play experiences both indoors and out.