We believe that all children are empowered in life when they can communicate well. We want the children of St James’ to become unique and ambitious writers. We will provide them with a secure foundation of writing for a purpose, to empower them to become writers who are equipped to use their skills confidently and creatively in opportunities presented to them both now and in the future.  

Like composing a piece of music, children need to understand and identify the ‘notes’ or components in order to be able to put them together creatively to produce a piece that will impact on their audience in just the way they intend. To facilitate this, we believe that establishing early key writing habits and fundamentals is essential. 

All children in St. James’ will become writers and will: 

• Be motivated, resilient, and resourceful. 

• Develop their own individual creativity in their writing. 

• Understand writing for a purpose and audience. 

• Be secure in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, enabling free and confident writing. 

• Engage in a wide range of experiences that initiate discussion, allowing children to develop their own ideas and opinions in their writing. 

• Have opportunities to explore and use a rich and varied bank of vocabulary. 

• Learn to use a cursive script designed to promote fluent and neat writing

To enable our writers to achieve the above we use strategies based on both Talk4Writing and Opening Doors.          

For spellings, we use the progression from NoNonsense Spelling but we adapt the lessons themselves to best suit our children and enable them to be successful.