Intent

At Kempshott Infant School, we teach the children to become confident, capable and enthusiastic writers. We nurture children’s confidence and help them see themselves as writers. We inspire them to write with enjoyment and purpose, giving them ownership over what they write and helping them understand how writing can turn thoughts into words and communicate their ideas.

Our English curriculum provides children with exciting, high‑quality texts and rich opportunities that develop a love for reading, writing and speaking and listening. Through the teaching of English, we are equipping children with key life skills enabling them to communicate effectively in a range of both spoken and written forms across all subjects and contexts.

Implementation

Writing in Year R is all about building strong early foundations for literacy. Children develop their skills through a combination of physical development, mark‑making, phonics, and early sentence construction. Our aim is to help them grow in confidence, strengthen their fine motor control, and understand that writing has meaning and purpose.

Our small group guided writing sessions with the teacher focus on supporting our phonics programme, encouraging children to ‘have a go’ by sounding out words independently. Alongside this, children have free access to a range of writing resources within their play, giving them regular opportunities to explore, practise, and apply their emerging skills in meaningful ways.

In Key Stage 1, we follow the Hampshire Learning Journey model when planning our learning journeys.  This follows the format of Stimulate & Generate, Capture, Sift & Sort, and Create, Refine & Evaluate. Through well-planned sequences of lessons, children are supported to become independent writers, guiding them to draw on their knowledge of phonics, grammar and reading. Children are given lots of opportunities to acquire new skills in their writing, practice previously taught skills and produce outcomes for a range of audiences and purposes.

We maintain a balance between composition and transcription so that children develop fluency as writers, focussing on foundational skills such as spelling, punctuation, sentence construction and handwriting. Grammar is taught within English lessons and then applied during independent writing. Children write every day through English, phonics, handwriting and spelling sessions, with each of these designed to strengthen specific elements of their writing.

Children participate in a variety of writing activities that are planned in 2 to 3 week cycles.  The children are taught a range of skills and explore WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) allowing them to be clear of the writing outcome at the end of a learning journey.  Children are given regular opportunities to practise key skills before completing their final writing outcome. These skills are carefully planned and sequenced so that by the time they are ready to write their final piece, they are confident and able to apply what they have learnt.

Our working walls show useful vocabulary and help children use what they already know. They support the development of key writing skills and encourage children to use these skills when writing.

Impact

Children at Kempshott Infant School grow into enthusiastic, confident writers. They enjoy sharing their ideas and feel proud of the work they produce. They write with purpose and growing independence, using the skills and experiences they have built up through our writing curriculum.

They understand the steps of writing and make sensible choices about what to include and how to say it. They respond well to feedback from their teachers and work together to think about how to improve. By the end of Key Stage 1 children are developing the key skills they need to write independently. They learn to communicate meaning through clear, well‑structured sentences that are punctuated correctly and easy to read. These skills grow from strong foundations in phonics, spelling, handwriting, and sentence building.

Handwriting

Handwriting sessions are taught across all the year groups as separate sessions. The letters are taught in letter families in handwriting books and these handwriting skills are then transferred into their English and topic books to practise. In Year 2 the children are taught to join once they can consistently form lowercase letters, use proper spacing and have developed necessary fine motor skills.

We have a handwriting award to celebrate when children can form all the letters in each letter family. Once they can write every letter in each family correctly, they receive a certificate which is presented in assembly. When they have mastered all the families, they are awarded a pencil.