At Flushdyke, we are passionate about writing. Our writing curriculum is built on high-quality, deliberately chosen texts which act as a stimulus to inspire, engage and motivate our young writers.  Through careful planning, children have a clear context, purpose and audience for their writing ensuring that writing outcomes are meaningful.

Our writing curriculum aims to develop the ambitious and articulate authors that exists in each and every one of our children. Writing is taught through a well-considered and refined sequence where children learn the content and features of a model text linked to the purpose and genre they are focusing on (often by heart). Fluency with the sentence structures and content is well practised before children apply their learning to a new piece of writing, where they can demonstrate their newly found proficiency. Writing is then published by the children to form wonderful displays in the classroom.

Each year group begins the teaching of writing by focusing on the key skills which we expect children to master. These are rigorously taught and practised so that children develop their fluency with these skills. Writing is a creative process which can set the children’s imaginations alight. Teachers model how to capture these ideas using the key skills, in addition to always striving to use more ambitious vocabulary and sentences. This leads to high-quality outcomes of which both teachers and children are rightly very proud. We expect children to have very high standards of presentation in their writing, and teach a cursive style of handwriting. 

We teach spelling to build on children’s knowledge and understanding of phonics. Children learn the spelling patterns and rules which they must apply to increasingly ambitious vocabulary. Weekly, children learn a series of words linked to their spelling pattern focus. Through repetitive 'Look Say Cover Write Check' sessions, children master the spelling pattern and engrain new words in to their long term memory.