Writing

At St Paul’s, we believe that writing is a powerful form of communication that enables children to express ideas, share experiences and engage with the world around them. Inspired by the example of Jesus — who listened, taught through stories and valued every individual voice — we aim to develop confident communicators and thoughtful writers who can express themselves with clarity, compassion and purpose.

We recognise that strong writing begins long before children formally write sentences. Writing develops through communication, storytelling, vocabulary development, mark-making, reading, and meaningful experiences. Our curriculum is therefore carefully sequenced from our two-year-old provision through to Year 6, ensuring children steadily build the foundational knowledge, skills and confidence needed to become successful writers.

Oracy

Oracy plays a central role in learning at St Paul’s and is a key part of our writing and communication curriculum. Children are given regular opportunities to discuss ideas, verbally rehearse sentences, explain their thinking and engage in storytelling and purposeful conversation before writing. Through structured talk, discussion and rich language experiences, children develop the confidence, vocabulary and communication skills needed to become successful and independent learners.

Oracy is the ability to communicate effectively through spoken language. It includes speaking clearly, listening carefully, expressing ideas confidently and engaging thoughtfully in conversation and discussion. We believe children often need to say something confidently before they can successfully write it independently.

Intent

Our writing curriculum is designed to:

• develop confident, fluent and independent writers

• build strong communication and language skills

• develop creativity, vocabulary and authorial choices

• ensure children can write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences

• foster a love of writing and storytelling

Writing is taught through Jane Considine’s The Write Stuff approach, which develops children’s:

• Ideas

• Tools

• Structure

We believe children learn to write successfully by first developing the language to express their ideas confidently.

Implementation

Writing teaching begins in our two-year-old provision through:

• storytelling

• songs and rhymes

• mark making

• Drawing Club

• vocabulary development

• fine motor development

In Reception, children gradually transition from Drawing Club into The Write Stuff during the Summer term as they become increasingly secure in phonics, communication and sentence construction.

Across school, writing is taught through:

• sentence stacking lessons

• explicit modelling

• oral rehearsal before writing

• high-quality texts

• purposeful writing opportunities

• vocabulary instruction

• opportunities for editing and improving work

Children are taught handwriting progressively through the Letter-join programme. Adults carefully assess and track pencil grip, handwriting posture and fine motor development throughout EYFS and KS1, providing targeted support where needed.

Writing opportunities are embedded across the curriculum so children can apply skills meaningfully in different contexts.

Teachers regularly moderate writing within school and with local schools. The school also uses No More Marking comparative judgement to strengthen assessment accuracy and consistency.

Impact

By the time children leave St Paul’s, they are confident writers who can:

• communicate ideas clearly and effectively

• write for a range of purposes and audiences

• use ambitious vocabulary and varied sentence structures

• edit and improve their work independently

• write with increasing fluency, accuracy and creativity

Children show clear progression from early mark making and oral storytelling through to producing sustained and high-quality writing independently by the end of Year 6.

Most importantly, children develop confidence, pride and enjoyment in writing.