At Whitings Hill, we aim to provide our children with an English curriculum that is motivating, meaningful and purposeful.  A variety of narrative, non-fiction and poetry text types are taught within each year group which support an in-depth teaching of the writing process. At Whitings Hill we want our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We want our children to become fluent and effective writers who have a solid understanding and application of key knowledge and skills in grammar, spelling and handwriting from the start of the journey to the end of their journey at Whitings Hill.

Aspects to consider when writing

There are a number of aspects to consider when writing. These include:

• knowing what the purpose of our writing is and who we are writing for
• thinking about the content and what form our writing will take. For example it might be a shopping list, a report, a letter to a friend, or an email
• thinking about the structure appropriate to the purpose and form of our writing, including the use of sentences, paragraphs and punctuation
• selecting the vocabulary that will best convey our meaning
• thinking about how to spell the words we write

Supporting and encouraging your child

Children can find writing a real challenge. They need encouragement, support and praise for their efforts. You can best support your child by:

• encouraging them to write on every possible occasion, praising their efforts and, importantly, letting them see you writing whenever possible
• encouraging them to write for pleasure, not just to get better at writing. They might choose to write comics, poems or recipes - all of these give them a chance to apply writing skills around purpose, audience, language, layout and structure
• playing word games with them, for example, I spy, Crosswords, Wordsearches and Change one letter puzzles
• pointing to interesting or new words as you read with your child (without interrupting the flow of the story) or that come up in conversation. Help them to develop a fascination for new words and support them in trying to use them in different contexts
• composing emails, letters, poems, stories together or even creating simple web pages