Writing
At Trafalgar we are passionate about developing our children's skills as writers and place great importance and power of these skills. Our writing is closely linked to our half termly topic themes; this approach gives the children even more time to learn about their topics whilst also providing a meaningful output for their work. The quality texts that we have chosen are designed to engage the children through a range of fiction, non- fiction and poetry whilst exposing the children to stories from other cultures and traditional tales to inform their writing.
Throughout the process of writing, we encourage the children to talk and discuss the language used in quality texts to develop their vocabulary acquisition. We embed the understanding of this language through drama, as well as practising using these new key words within sentences. Writing is broken down into small chunks helping the children to build up the necessary vocabulary, sentence structures and content required to produce a high quality finished piece of work.
We put great value in handwriting, teaching correct letter formation from the start of Reception where it s closely linked to our phonics scheme; Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised. Correct letter formation allows children to concentrate on the quality and quantity of their writing content and is crucial in developing confident, independent writers. Letter formation and handwriting continues to be a priority throughout the school right up to the end of Y6 and children progress from Little Wandle letter formation to following the Nelson Handwriting scheme.
Spelling, Punctuation and Gramma (SPaG) are across each key stages through both explicit SPaG sessions and as part of the wider English curriculum.