Writing

At Holmfirth J I & N School we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds reading scheme to teach phonics in Reception and Year 1.  Click here to find resources which will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters.

There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home. Find our full Reception and Year 1 teaching programme overview here to see what your child will learn and when. 

• WRITING PROGRESSION download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineWRITING PROGRESSION
• Y1 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY1 WRITING INTENT
• Y2 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY2 WRITING INTENT
• Y3 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY3 WRITING INTENT
• Y4 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY4 WRITING INTENT
• Y5 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY5 WRITING INTENT
• Y6 WRITING INTENT download_for_offline
  download_for_offlineY6 WRITING INTENT

 We want our children to confidently communicate their thoughts and their ideas with the written word. By the time children at Holmfirth JIN leave our school, it is the aim that they will be polished and independent writers who have their own style and approach to writing. We want them to have the confidence to share their writing with others and to confidently respond to and appreciate the writing of their peers, irrespective of genre.

From the first days in the Foundation Stage, children will start to experience a wide-range of cross-curricular links which will form the building blocks of their future writing experience. This, allied with the expert teaching of phonics, letter formation and the construction of simple sentences, results in children who are motivated and excited to share their writing and their ideas.

As children progress through Key Stage One, they are taught the fundamental skills needed to write a sequence of linked sentences that flow coherently on a range of topics. This is modelled and reinforced in guided writing and Literacy sessions. As they become more prolific writers from Year 3 onwards, they are taught the fundamental skills in writing a ‘good’ paragraph. Planning of paragraphs is key to future success and is modelled and reinforced throughout Key Stage One and beyond. Our view is that once the children are secure in their abilities to write a well-structured paragraph they can transfer these skills to any text type. (Stories, poems, diaries, newspaper articles, explanation texts, recounts, reviews, non-chronological reports, persuasive texts, biographies, speeches and lists.) Other essential skills that are taught across the different year groups include the spelling of words taken from the national curriculum and the teaching of strategies to support the children with spelling unfamiliar words. Grammar is taught discreetly and is also embedded into the children’s writing as part of their literacy lessons.

Within the classroom, writing may take the form of whole class independent work, guided writing sessions where ideas are shared and developed and small group tasks where children are supported by key adults in order to ensure important concepts are grasped. Children’s progress is carefully tracked and recorded in their ‘Fantastic Writing’ books.