In an age of ever-increasing technology, the importance of keeping the skill of handwriting is stronger than ever. Handwriting is an essential asset within cultural capital that helps prepare them for their future success.

The National Handwriting Association point out that legible handwriting that can be produced comfortably, at speed and with little conscious effort allows a child to attend to the higher level aspects of writing composition and content.

The Institute of Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) state that writing by hand appears to improve our ability to remember things because we have to coordinate verbal and fine movement systems. Research from Princeton University corroborates this saying “Handwriting has been linked to tapping into specific areas of the brain that typing does not.”

At St Alban’s we believe after children have been taught how to successfully write, they should be focusing on idea formation, not letter formation.

Writing is a complex process. When writing a sentence let us consider what children need to master; handwriting, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, composition and spelling. There is so much to think about!

At St Alban’s we want all of our children to be fluent spellers, then they can pay attention to communicating their ideas.

To teach spellings we have two strategies. We teach children to spell through our phonics program (RWINC.) and we explicitly teach common exception words. Some children find spelling challenging, but don’t worry, at St Alban’s our teachers are highly skilled in making sure that spellings stick. We assess children regularly on common exception words and children are taught exactly what they need to progress.

At St Albans C of E Primary School we believe that literacy skills have a significant impact upon self-esteem, motivation and aspirations for the future. Being literate enables our pupils to be proactive in their own learning and to articulate their thoughts.

Our Writing Curriculum

We aim to support your children to become confident and inspired writers through a wide range of activities and teaching methods. Writing is a major part of the curriculum and along with reading, listening and talking, makes a significant contribution to the development of children as thinkers and learners. Here at St Albans we are dedicated to promoting creativity through the written word supported by the structured development of grammar and punctuation.

Throughout the school the children use a variety of texts to gain more knowledge about how to improve their own writing. The close relationship between reading and writing is an important one for us to develop as we feel that it is particularly important for our children to have a clear purpose for their writing and an awareness of the audience for which they are writing.

Pupils at St Albans are supported by a range of imaginative starting points including visits, visual stimulus and events taking place in school or the wider community. Opportunities for high quality writing are also identified and developed across the wider curriculum. Integrating writing   in such a meaningful and engaging way is central to continuing to raise pupil progress in writing and in promoting enthusiastic and independent writers.

Teachers use a variety of approaches to ensure that all pupils achieve success including modelling and demonstrating, structured writing frames, direct and indirect instruction and collaborative group work. Our aim is always to develop a purposeful curriculum to meet the needs of the whole school learning community.

Children and young people will demonstrate their progress in writing through the degree of independence they show, the organisation and quality of their ideas, their skills in spelling, punctuation and grammar, the match of their writing to audience and the effectiveness of their use of language.’

Link  to National Curriculum:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335186/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_English_220714.pdf