Writing 
Crags Writing Curriculum
At Crags, writing is an integral part of our curriculum and it is our aim by the time the children leave Year 6 that they will be independent and fluent writers. Our curriculum is designed with reading and writing at the core and all children are provided with opportunities to develop and apply their writing across other subject areas.
Teachers use the National Curriculum and school progression grids to plan a unit that encompasses spelling, punctuation and grammar. These lessons build towards a piece of writing which showcases pupils' acquired knowledge, skills and understanding. We tailor our curriculum to meet the needs and interests of our pupils, choosing texts or subject areas to drive the writing curriculum to inspire, motivate and establish pupil enjoyment and engagement in the subject.
Our curriculum is:- Broad and balanced.
- Adaptable to meet the needs and interests of all pupils.
- Uses different ways to stimulate children’s writing such as: visits, drama or experiences.
- Encourages children to write for a range of purpose and audiences.
- Designed to show progression through year groups and through genres.
- Lessons will teach new vocabulary as well as embedding vocabulary found in reading.
- Spelling, Punctuation and grammar is taught explicitly or as part of the unit plan.
- Handwriting is taught using the Letter Join scheme
Curriculum Documents
National Curriculum Whole School Genre OverviewWriting Progression Map Handwriting Yearly Overview
Handwriting 
Handwriting is first taught during the phonics lessons in the ‘write the sentence’ and ‘spelling’ section. Additionally, children will have handwriting sessions 2/3 times a week when teachers will focus upon specific letter formations.
We use the formation phrases to teach correct letter formation for each grapheme. At Crags, our children learn to first write using print.
Children are taught how to make all the correct letter shapes before learning how to join them fluently and develop a neat, cursive handwriting style. We use the letter join programme to teach handwriting.
Spelling
At Crags, we know that the teaching of spelling is vital for our children to become good writers. We have developed our own spelling progression document that links the phonic knowledge used in Little Wandle to the National Curriculum expectations for each year group.
Initially, we teach spelling in all our ‘Little Wandle’ lessons. We help children segment the sounds in words, work out which graphemes make those sounds and then write them down. We teach children the skills of spelling.
Furthermore, we ensure that we embed the spellings we teach in class outside the phonics lesson.
In Reception, this might be through modelling spelling when we write, through practising spellings for a specific GPC or writing lists of words with that GPC.
Soon we start talking to children about why certain words are spelled in a specific way. Even in Reception, children read and spell words where they will need to make choices about how they spell certain phonemes.
Children will be taught to spell explicitly in phonics and spelling lessons and then this is re-enforced in other writing lessons. Lessons are planned in a way that children re-visit past concepts, are taught something new and then given chance to practise and apply their skills. Children through school are then all given spellings that they are focusing on to work on at home.
