Writing

At Nobriggs Primary, we strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners. We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach; this links closely to the way we teach reading, as the text that we use in writing lessons, where possible, supports the writing journey.

Careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s English learning is relevant and meaningful: where possible linking our reading, writing to topics. We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.

Our intentions in writing are for children to: write for a purpose; see themselves as real writers; take ownership of their writing; see their writing as being an enjoyable and interesting process and be skilled and critical editors of their own work.

We aim to make writing inclusive and challenging for all. From our SEND children to our Greater Depth writers, staff use a range of adaptive teaching to support children with their work from letter formation, planning and sentence structure.

Collect, Connect, Create

We teach the National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children.

 

Across school, writing follows a shared, structured sequence we call Collect, Connect, Create:

• Collect: Immersion in high‑quality texts, features of text types and genres, and author intent.

• Connect: Grammar workshops taught in context, sentence structures, oracy into writing and spellings.

• Create: Planning using model texts and toolkits, drafting and revising through high-quality modelling, editing and redrafting to refine clarity and accuracy, publishing and celebrating writing outcomes.

Children write for clear audiences and purposes across a wide range of genres. Particular attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English: grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. Teachers clearly model writing skills and document the learning journey through consistent working walls; guided writing sessions are used to target specific needs of both groups and individuals. Children have opportunities to write at length, in extended, independent writing sessions at the end of a unit of work – applying their taught skills to an unsupported piece of writing.

Pupils are taught discrete punctuation and grammar skills, appropriate to their year group, within our text based approach to planning, allowing opportunities to identify, practice and consolidate grammatical understanding, whilst also being immersed in a text. Children then apply the grammar and punctuation skills that they have learnt in their extended pieces of writing.

Handwriting and transcription are taught explicitly using our own developed Norbriggs Handwriting Scheme.