The Downs 
Writing
At The Downs CE Primary School, we strive to help our children develop into proficient communicators, who are well-equipped with the key skills they need to become independent, life-long learners. We believe that Literacy has a vital role to play across the whole curriculum and underpins a significant part of our children’s learning.
All pupils engage in our writing ‘journey,’ where they are expected to, plan, draft, edit and improve their writing at an age appropriate level and we aim to ensure that all of our children are supported in developing their grammar, spelling, handwriting and composition skills.
As we acknowledge how closely reading and writing are intrinsically linked, we endeavour to provide a text-based approach to our teaching of writing, using quality texts as a stimulus. Careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s English learning is relevant, fully- rounded and meaningful: where possible linking our reading, writing and the topic that we are covering through our whole school ‘theme.’
- We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning. Our intentions in writing are for children to:
- · Write for a purpose across a range of genres
- · Effectively communicate their ideas
- · See themselves as real writers
- · Establish their writing ‘voice’
- · See writing as a useful and enjoyable process
- · Acquire the ability to organise and plan their written work
Our writing journey culminates in a 'final piece' of writing, a piece that shows all of the children's hard works and a piece that they are proud of.
Curriculum
/docs/Key_vocabulary_for_literacy_at_The_Downs.docx
Writing whole school overview pending
Spelling at The Downs
At The Downs, we use the 'Spelling Shed' scheme to teach spelling in line with the requirements of the National Curriculum.
Children have access to their own personal 'Spelling Shed' profiles for them to use and revise spellings at home.
https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/
Weekly spellings are available for all children and can be found in the 'home learning' section of each class page. For further information regarding our school curriculum, please contact the Headteacher or Deputy Headteacher via the school office.