Vision
Writing is essential for thinking, learning and communication. We employ a knowledge-rich curriculum centred on quality literature, helping pupils develop the confidence to express ideas clearly, reason critically and write with purpose across all subjects.
We emphasise expository writing from Year 1 onwards, using structured principles from the Hochman Method involving explicit instruction, guided practice and purposeful application.
How we teach writing
EYFS: Foundation skills include motor development, vocabulary growth, phonics, mark-making, and fostering creativity and confidence.
KS1 onwards: The Hochman Method guides expository writing development, progressing gradually from sentence-level work to extended compositions.
Key features:
- Four writing lessons weekly with spaced learning
- Consistent lesson structure with focused warm-ups
- Explicit teacher modelling with thinking-aloud demonstrations
- Group instruction enabling targeted guidance
- Immediate, specific, actionable feedback
- Kinetic Letters handwriting scheme (EYFS to Year 6)
- Stimuli include high-quality books, films, images and real-world events
Ensuring progress for all
Strategies include cold-calling, partner discussions, scaffolded tasks and high expectations with adaptations. Deep thinking activities involve sentence combining, expansion, note-making and paragraph construction using frameworks.
Progress is supported through repeated concepts, guided practice, consistent marking codes, retrieval tasks, early misconception identification and real-time lesson adaptations.