At St Gregory's, all children are exposed to high quality texts, which stimulate positive responses to reading, high quality writing, and purposeful opportunities for Speaking & Listening.
Our writing curriculum ensures that all children have many opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing, through The Power of Reading and via 'The Write Stuff'.
Early Writing is taught through a number of strategies by experienced teachers. We have recently further enhanced the way writing is taught in Upper Key Stage Two by implementing 'The Write Stuff 'approach (see more below).
We also recognise that children need lots of rich speaking and drama activities, to support their imagination and give them experiences that will equip them to become good writers.
At St Gregory’s we use the Schofield and Sims Write Well scheme for handwriting. We have dedicated handwriting sessions within the school day, that allow us time to ‘focus’ and learn the letter/ join. We then have time to ‘try it’, ‘practise it’ and ‘apply it.
Throughout school, grammar and punctuation is taught to match the writing purpose. This begins with teaching and consolidating basic sentence structures in Early years and Key Stage One.
In Key stage Two, children further develop their understanding of increasingly complex sentence structures, and using the relevant technical terms to be able to discuss and justify the choices they have made when structuring their ideas. 'The Write Stuff' also teaches and reinforces grammar within each unit of work.
Children in KS2 undertake grammar Hammer checks, to assess their understanding and skills and to show their understanding of the correct terminology.
At St Gregory's, we have devised our own whole-school spelling scheme.
Children are taught spellings, which are and tested weekly throughout KS1 and KS2 and children's progress in spelling is tracked carefully as they move through school, so that any gaps in spelling can be identified and quickly addressed.
Children also regularly use dictionaries and thesaurus to check and improve their work.