Writing at Littleton

Writing at Littleton grows out of a love of books. Our writing curriculum, Literacy Tree, is built around high-quality, diverse children's literature, so that every piece of writing has a real purpose and a real audience, whether children are writing to entertain, persuade, inform or explain.

In Nursery, writing begins long before children pick up a pencil to form letters. Provision is play-based and language-rich: children build the gross and fine motor control that writing depends on through dough disco, threading and mark-making on a large scale, both indoors and outdoors. They make marks for their own purposes and begin to understand that print carries meaning, hear and join in with a wide range of stories, rhymes and songs, and start to recognise and write the letters in their own name as they are ready. Adults model writing for real purposes throughout the day, so that every child begins to see themselves as a communicator from the very start.

In Reception, children build their earliest writing through Saplings, a picture-book based approach that develops ideas through talk and play before children are expected to write at length. In Years 1 and 2, Writing Roots sequences take children on a journey through a high-quality text: from immersing themselves in the story and gathering ideas and vocabulary, through shared and modelled writing with their teacher, to producing a piece of independent writing they are proud to share.

Spelling is taught through Little Wandle phonics, so that the sounds children learn to read are the same sounds they learn to write, keeping reading and writing tightly connected from the very start.

As children move through the school, they take on more of the writing process for themselves: planning their ideas, drafting, and learning to review and improve their own learning. By the end of Year 2, children write for a range of purposes and audiences, and see themselves as authors.

Click here to view our full Writing Policy.