Writing
At St Mary’s, the teaching of Writing centres around high quality texts, which stimulate children’s imaginations and creativity, develop their knowledge and vocabulary, and showcase effective writing skills and techniques which they can identify and ‘magpie’ for use in their own writing. We use books and teaching sequences from a variety of sources, including the Power of Reading and The Literacy Tree. Writing tasks are linked to these texts and build up to a final, extended piece of writing in a particular genre. Wherever possible, these final pieces are written for a ‘real’ audience and purpose. Children spend time analysing effective and less effective examples of the genre they are working on as well as practising the specific skills required. We embed the teaching of grammar and punctuation through the texts and genres studied. Children are also encouraged to use speaking, listening, reading and writing skills across a range of different situations and subjects, using cross-curricular links wherever possible.
Spelling
We encourage children to ‘have a go’ at writing as soon as possible and to use their phonic skills and knowledge to spell. The ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ scheme is used in Key Stages 1 and 2 to teach two to three short, discrete spelling lessons each week. Additionally, children learn the spellings of the common exception words relevant to their year group.
| Name | |
|---|---|
| How to help your child with their spelling words.pdf | Download |
| Year 1 Spelling Guide.pdf | Download |
| Year 2 Spelling Guide.pdf | Download |
| Spelling Word Lists for Year 3-4.pdf | Download |
| Year 3 and 4 Spelling Guide.pdf | Download |
| Spelling Word-list-for-years-5-and-6.pdf | Download |
| Year 5 and 6 Spelling Guide.pdf | Download |
Handwriting
We understand that children need to be confident in the mechanics of writing before their working memory can be freed up to develop the content and ‘flair’ of writing. Therefore, as soon as children are able to form most letters correctly and have a good pencil grip, we teach a fluent and legible handwriting style using the ‘Letterjoin’ programme consistently across the school.
We teach cursive writing to all pupils from Year One, more details of which can be accessed through the following links.
www.letterjoin.co.uk
Please see details below of how you and your child can access the Letterjoin cursive handwriting website that we use at school for handwriting lessons.
If you are using a PC, the log-in details are:
Home user name: lj0024
Home password: home
For tablets and iPads, please use:
iPad/Tablet user name: lj0024
Your swipe code is set as a capital `L` shape, starting at the top left:
O
O
O O O
Happy handwriting!
