In Year 1, we want our young authors to learn to love writing. We want children to feel confident expressing their ideas and to develop their imaginations through writing. Most importantly, we want them to see themselves as authors and understand that their ideas and stories are worth sharing.

Alongside reading a wide range of wonderful stories and exploring different genres, we will immerse the children in these texts during our writing lessons. We will use high-quality stories as inspiration, allowing children to become familiar with a text and its characters before developing the skills they need to become successful authors.

Throughout the year, the children will have opportunities to write across a range of genres, including:

• Instructions and recipes
• Creative narratives
• Retellings of traditional tales
• Poetry
• Recounts

Writing lessons are taught daily and will include opportunities for children to retell and rehearse stories orally before putting their ideas onto paper. Children will be taught to use their phonics knowledge when writing words and will develop their writing through oral rehearsal, dictation and sentence writing.

We will make sure that every piece of writing has a purpose and an audience. Whether the children are writing a recipe to share, a story for someone to enjoy or a recount of something they have experienced, we want them to understand that writing is a powerful way to communicate their ideas.

Most importantly, every piece of writing will be celebrated. We want children to feel proud of their work, recognise how much they are learning and develop the confidence to keep trying, experimenting and improving as writers.

 Handwriting

Alongside our writing lessons, the children will have daily handwriting sessions. We will focus on developing accurate letter formation and making sure children are using the correct pencil grip and sitting with good posture.

Daily handwriting practice not only supports children in developing neat and accurate letter formation, but also helps to build their confidence, fluency and writing stamina. As these skills become more automatic, children can focus more of their attention on the exciting part of writing , sharing their ideas!

Here are the alliterative phrases that help the children to form letters correctly.