Writing 

Our writing lessons are adapted from the CUSP (Curriculum by Unity Schools Partnership) Curriculum to meet the needs of our children.

CUSP Writing is an ambitious research and evidence-based approach, with clear progression through the standards and expectations of the National Curriculum.  We are focused on ensuring every child is taught the key skills and techniques to be able to communicate effectively in their writing, while providing a range of opportunities to be creative.  

Children participate in daily writing sessions. All writing sequences are planned to take 2-3 weeks, to ensure that writing is of a high quality and to ensure children are taught the range of skills needed for the specific writing genre, as well as giving them time to practice and apply these new skills.

Units are purposely revisited during the school year (A&B).  Block A is the first time that pupils will meet the text type and its associated concepts. Block B allows pupils to reflect on what they already know about this form of writing and build on this more independently and more creatively, as their confidence develops. 

Our writing units can be found here:

Furthermore, the long-term sequence has been deliberately harmonised with the wider curriculum. This means that each unit has been placed where we see natural opportunities for pupils to write about concepts that they have already met in the wider curriculum. This helps to reduce the cognitive attention directed at assimilating contextual knowledge and increase cognitive focus on the process of writing.  Our curriculum cohesion documents can be found here: 

Handwriting

We use the Kinetic Letter programme for the teaching of handwriting across the Federation.  It enables children to develop legible handwriting that is produced quickly and automatically.  With the development of automaticity, handwriting becomes a valuable tool and not a hindrance to learning.

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 The four threads of the programme are:

• Making Bodies Stronger 
• Learning the Letters
• Holding the pencil
• Flow & Fluency 

The key principles of the programme are:

• Building physical strength underpins handwriting and concentration. This knowledge informs the working positions that children use for writing and the strengthening targets they work on.
• Pupils are not expected to do anything before they are developmentally ready for it.
• The different components of writing are mastered individually before being used in combination.
• Letters are learnt as movements, not as visual shapes, and movement remains central to developing automaticity in letter formation, flow and fluency.
• Posture is important in developing the correct position for handwriting and so children are taught how to organise their working position and paper position to enable comfortable and fluent writing from the start.
• Correct pencil hold is taught from the start (i.e. as soon as a tri-pod grip is developmentally appropriate).

The Kinetic Letters font covers all the letters in the alphabet and is based on a set of rules that have been made as simple as possible to enable fast learning. The order in which letters are taught recognises the cognitive development of children.

Look at the impact of Kinetic Letters: 

Spellings 

Spellings are taught for 1 hour, at intervals throughout the week.  We use resources from Spelling Shed because their approach matches our focus on research-based practice and the importance of retrieval.

We teach spellings through:  

Further information can be found here:

As well as learning and applying spelling patterns, it is important for children to be able to spell and apply the following Common Exception Words to their writing: