Why we teach children to write

From the moment children begin their journey at St Anne’s, we seek to spark a deep-rooted love of language and literature, giving them a voice and tool to share their ideas with the world.

Through writing, our aim is to unlock children’s imagination, creativity and ability to encaptivate an audience for whom they write.  Empowering our children to become confident, adventurous communicators lays the foundations for them to become successful writers, developing the skills to form, articulate and communicate their ideas for a range of different purposes. Through inspiring writing and literary experiences, we hope to enthuse the next generation of award-winning authors!

The knowledge, skills and understanding children develop

Children learn to write through our approach of developing oracy alongside the understanding that all written text conveys meaning. From initial mark making in the Early Years provision, children begin to form letters, making connections with sounds through the teaching of our exciting, highly visual phonics programme.  Within the indoor and outdoor provision, every opportunity is taken to develop children’s writing through both child-initiated and adult-led activities with the view to all children achieving the Early Learning Goal.

As developing authors, children build their resilience and adaptability through the exploration of high-quality narrative, poetry and non-fiction texts, gathering the organisational skills to write across a range of genres. In order to achieve Age Related Expectations (ARE) in Key Stage 1, children learn the skills to plan, draft and edit their writing and enjoy publishing and reading aloud their writing to their peers. They are supported in developing a legible style of handwriting, enabling them to communicate their ideas and personal experiences in writing clearly. Embedded grammar, spelling and punctuation skills underpin our children’s ability to write coherently.

The learning experience

With a focus on developing children’s oracy, speaking and listening lies at the heart of everything we do. From Nursey through to Year 2, children develop the skills to re-tell stories and poems, orally imitating the language they hear. Stimulated by the oral rehearsal of narratives from around the world and interesting non-fiction and poetry texts, children internalise the language that they need ready for writing. This is strengthened through drama and role-play across the school and opportunities to perform stories and recite poems to real life audiences.

With an initial focus on gross motor skills, children’s strength, balance, posture and control grows alongside their fine motor skills which support finger and hand strength. Engaging and often messy pre-writing activities, such as Dough Disco and experimenting with forming letters in different textures (e.g. sand, rice and shaving foam) encourages the children to be adventurous writers from an early age. Catchy ditties help all children with the formation of their letters and support the learning of phonics.

Exciting and enriching, immersion experiences launch every enquiry-led writing unit when awe and wonder is ignited and children’s imagination is inspired.  Collaboratively creating a writing tool kit, aids the children in replicating the structures required within different forms of texts. They are given plenty of opportunities to apply the writing skills they have learnt in different contexts including writing about their own, first hand experiences.

Children are encouraged to ‘reach for the stars’ at St Anne’s and we recognise that fostering a growth mindset is key to the success of our young authors journeys.