Reception

• Adult led writing is planned weekly and are completed on a 1:1 or small group basis with a teacher.
• Writing opportunities are planned for in each phonics session.
• During phonics, writing is practised on whiteboards and pencil and paper with an expectation that sentences should be produced by Summer Term.
• Writing opportunities are thematic and based on the half-termly topic and class text.

Key Stages One and Two

We follow the CUSP curriculum for writing in Years 1-6.

Lessons allow children to secure grammatical and technical accuracy, high-quality sentence composition and a developed, authorial voice. An emphasis is placed on cohesion and sequencing of planning, giving children the necessary tools to write effectively.

Teachers explicitly teach pupils the knowledge and competencies that they need about the different facets of writing and the writing process. Planning time is spent considering how to ensure that every lesson serves every pupil. CUSP Writing synthesises the multiple aspects of knowledge and competency needed to write effectively and sequences these, using  cognitive science to ensure that pupils embed learning into their long-term memory.

Pupils need a deep conceptual understanding of each key element of the writing curriculum before they can independently compose and execute high-quality extended outcomes. By breaking down the much larger objectives in the National Curriculum and ensuring that pupils systematically revisit these in multiple contexts, we are able to move them towards a depth of understanding that they can apply flexibly and confidently in a range of contexts.

The Writing curriculum contains a large body of conceptual knowledge (such as word classes and punctuation marks required to be understood in each year group) that is explicitly taught alongside the development of writing competencies and processes, such as drafting, proof-reading and editing.

CUSP Writing is built on a Reduce and Revisit model. Pupils study a reduced number of text types in favour of revisiting a small number to achieve mastery. These text types have been carefully selected to ensure balance and progression across the whole of the primary journey.