Intent
At Bromesberrow St. Mary’s, communication is at the heart of writing. We believe that to be effective communicators through writing, pupils need strong verbal and non-verbal skills, secure transcription, and the ability to craft sentences and texts that are clear, engaging, and purposeful.
Our writing curriculum is rooted in a Quality Text–based approach, with each English unit built around a carefully chosen text. These texts engage our pupils, broaden their cultural capital, and foster an appreciation of difference and diversity. We ensure a broad, rich spread of literature, planned in advance but flexible enough to seize opportunities for authentic and relevant writing experiences as they arise.
We place a high priority on oracy, recognising that confident speaking and listening are the foundations of confident writing. Oracy development is made explicit in our long-term planning, with purposeful opportunities for discussion, drama, role-play, debate, and presentation embedded across the curriculum. These activities help pupils to articulate ideas clearly, explore vocabulary in context, and rehearse the language structures they will later use in their writing.
In our English books, each unit begins with a ‘front cover’ page introducing the text, associated grammar and punctuation focus, and intended outcomes. This provides pupils with a clear sense of purpose and audience. Every unit builds towards a ‘final published piece’, giving pupils a tangible goal and celebrating achievement.
We place great importance on transcription skills—handwriting, spelling, and sentence construction—so that pupils secure the basics before progressing to extended texts. Mastery at sentence level, including accurate punctuation and grammatical control, provides the foundation for confident composition and effective communication at text level.
In the Early Years, our approach is being enriched and innovated by Drawing Club—a creative, story-led approach that combines drawing, storytelling, vocabulary development, and early writing. Through Drawing Club, children explore characters, settings, and adventures inspired by quality stories, animations, or short films. Each drawing is brought to life with ‘secret codes’—phonics sounds, words, or numbers—bridging the gap between imaginative mark-making and purposeful writing. This playful, language-rich environment builds strong foundations for oracy, transcription, sentence construction, and a love of words.
In Key Stage 1, Drawing Club evolves to become a scaffold for more structured writing. Drawings act as story planning tools, vocabulary is extended with more adventurous word choices, and ‘secret codes’ now include grammar targets and spelling patterns. Pupils rehearse ideas orally, build short narratives, and develop the stamina to produce paragraphs, all while improving handwriting fluency and accuracy.
As pupils progress through the school, we continue to nurture creativity alongside technical accuracy, encouraging deliberate vocabulary choices, varied sentence structures, and cohesive organisation. Our curriculum ensures that all pupils develop the confidence, skills, and passion to see themselves as authors with something important to say.
Our Core Drivers for Writing
- Teach pupils to be fluent writers, in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and handwriting—skills essential for clear communication.
- Inspire and enable pupils to write for a variety of purposes and audiences, giving them both the motivation and the tools to succeed.
- Immerse pupils in high-quality texts so they learn from the best examples, write for pleasure, and communicate with clarity and accuracy.
To be a good writer, pupils need to:
- Have strong verbal communication skills (expression, intonation, rich vocabulary) and non-verbal communication skills (gesture, facial expression).
- Spell accurately so that meaning is clear.
- Vary sentences to ensure clarity and interest, using grammar and punctuation effectively.
- Write legibly so that their work can be read and understood.
Our SHARE–WRITE–ORGANISE Checklist (front of pupil books):
Share
- I have a purpose for writing and know who will be reading my work.
- I can share my ideas for writing and listen to the ideas of others.
Write
- I can write my ideas down so others can read them.
Organise
- I can organise my writing so that people enjoy and understand it.
Implementation
- Oracy: We prioritise this through our focus on quality adult-child interactions across the curriculum and through opportunities woven into our curriculum.
- Spelling: We use Little Wandle Phonics approach to teach spelling up until the end of Year 3, with Twinkl Spelling resources gradually taking over from this (this transition is clearly mapped out in our Phonics and Spelling Curriculum Progression). This progression document then maps out the explicit teaching of spelling for KS2, where a new spelling rule is taught each week. Children then have explicit opportunities to practise and apply these to their writing across the curriculum. All children are taught our spelling Curriculum, however we recognise that for some children spelling can be a significant barrier to writing. With this in mind we adapt the curriculum to enable them to access and improve spelling alongside quality first teaching e.g. use of Clicker technology, catch up phonics or Precison Teaching.
- Grammar and Punctuation: Grammar rules are taught explicitly through our text based curriculum, whereby teachers use our writing progression to enable children to learn the correct conventions matched to the text they are immersed in e.g. if the quality text is ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ by Julia Donaldson in Y1, then you would be learning to add in appropriate adjectives to make your character description sentences more interesting to the reader.
- Handwriting: We teach children to form the letters accurately to write words in a non cursive script from Reception through to the end of year 2. This is taught daily as part of our phonics programme. We then introduce cursive script from Y3 upwards. This is taught as part of our spelling approach. All children are taught using this handwriting approach, however we recognise that some children have significant barriers in fine motor development. With this in mind we support the communication element of writing using technology and word processing software.
Impact
In order for our Writing Curriculum to have had an impact, we will see children who are:
- Able to write for a variety of different purposes and audiences
- Part of an inspired, motivated and engage community of writers
- Able to spell accurately and where there are specific barriers to spelling are able to use other mediums to support communication in writing, so that spelling is not a barrier to writing
- Able to vary sentences with knowledge, skill and purpose in appropriate contexts to interest and engage the reader
- Have a legible handwriting style which enables them to communicate on paper and where handwriting is a barrier to writing then good word processing skills to enable effective communication in writing to occur.
Please see below:
- An overview of what a writing lesson looks like at Bromesberrow
- Our Writing Progression Overview
- Our Long Term Planning Curriculum for Writing. This is evolving due to changes in mixed age classes and the needs of pupils.