Writing

 Writing sits at the heart of our curriculum. We want every child to see themselves as a writer, someone who writes with confidence, clarity and purpose. From the earliest years, we build on children’s experiences as readers and gradually develop them into skilled, independent writers.

We believe that the most powerful writing happens when children understand why they are writing and who they are writing for.

• Real audiences: Children write letters, reports, stories, explanations and persuasive texts for authentic purposes—such as informing, entertaining, or influencing others.

• Text types in context: Each unit is rooted in high‑quality texts so pupils can see how real writers make choices about vocabulary, structure and style.

• Voice and choice: As they progress, pupils are encouraged to develop their own writer’s voice, making deliberate decisions about language and form.

By continually linking reading and writing, pupils learn to “read like a writer” and “write like a reader”, drawing on models they know and love.

Our writing curriculum is carefully sequenced and spiralled from Early Years to Year 6.

• Long‑term planning: We have developed a clear long‑term plan that introduces new knowledge step by step, ensuring progression in transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (ideas, structure and style).

• Revisiting and building: Key skills—such as sentence structure, punctuation, vocabulary choices and paragraphing—are revisited regularly in new contexts so pupils can consolidate and deepen their understanding.

• From support to independence: Early units are highly scaffolded, with shared and guided writing. Over time, support is gradually reduced so pupils can plan, draft, revise and publish more independently.

This spiralling approach means children do not encounter concepts once and move on; instead, they return to them at increasing levels of complexity, strengthening both confidence and mastery.

Reading

At Bellfield Primary School we aim to provide a curriculum where reading and writing are taught in both a subject specific and cross-curricular way. We believe that good readers make good writers and so we actively promote and encourage ‘Reading as a Reader’ and ‘Reading as a Writer’ as both necessary pre-requisites to independent writing.

Grammar is taught explicitly through the text we are studying that term, as research shows that knowledge is best internalised when taught within a familiar context.

Writing is a primary means of expression, both for personal cognitive purposes and for communicating meaning with others. Pupils learn how to write with confidence, fluency, imagination and accuracy by orchestrating their knowledge of context and composition (text level), grammatical knowledge (sentence level) and knowledge of phonics and word recognition (word level). We provide a wide variety of reasons and purposes for writing accompanied by child initiated and role-play writing and use techniques such as Drama for Writing to help children with ideas and inspiration.

All children’s writing is valued and their writing is frequently displayed throughout school. 

Reading

At this school we teach reading through a mixture of whole class, small group and individual reading opportunities. We use a range of books, covering different genres rather than relying on one scheme alone. In this way we cover depth and breadth within each level. Our books are grouped according to nationally recognised Book Band levels and are available for the children to read at home and in school.

For information on how we teach Phonics please click here.