"Reading is like breathing in, and writing is like breathing out." Pam Allyn.

The journey to being an effective writer begins in Reception at St John Fisher. Before children can write, they must talk. Throughout Reception, children learn through carefully considered play opportunities that foster purposeful and progressive social interaction and most importantly language; a crucial step in writing development. At St John Fisher, we immerse our children in language with support from our knowledge based curriculum and modelled talk from all adults.

Phonics teaching leads the way for the next part of the writing journey. Teachers in EYFS and KS1 model daily how to sound, write and read different letters and sounds, building to increasingly complex words, phrases, sentences and beyond. Children in Key Stage Two are taught spelling three times a week so they are exposed to the spellings frequently. Here the children are taught the spelling rules and the meanings of the words too.

'Words are essentially tools, like an artist’s paint palette, the more you have available to you, the richer your vision of the world is, the broader your imagination and the greater your ability to express yourself' Alex Quigley, Closing the Word Gap.

Vocabulary is crucial and something we focus heavily on. We encourage children to question words they are unsure of and find ways of understanding the meaning of new words. Vocabulary lessons are fed throughout are curriculum; including Reading, Spelling and Literacy lessons weekly.

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided.  Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.

From Year 1 to Year 6, an independent piece of writing is formally assessed at the end of each term. Teachers assess writing using a set of non-negotiables alongside selected year-group-specific criteria, in line with our assessment policy. This allows us to track each child’s progress accurately over time and ensures that appropriate support or further challenge is provided where needed. Writing judgements are moderated regularly across the school to ensure consistency, accuracy and high expectations.

Our aim at St John Fisher is for all children to become enthusiastic and effective writers; with an awareness of the reader; to write with purpose; to write with grammatical accuracy, with appropriate style and flair; and to be able to write at length, within a variety of genres.