Learning to write involves a wide variety of skills that children need to be taught. The most important thing is that writing is used to convey meaning.

 

The children at Westmeads have many opportunities to write for real and imaginary purposes. Many of these are preceded with lots of talk, drama and role play to help the children to engage with what they want to write.

 

One of the most important things that we have been working on recently is changing children's attitudes to writing so that they find it useful and enjoyable rather than a chore! By choosing exciting learning themes and creating purposeful opportunities we feel that we have a school full of children who are always keen to try their best.

 

We also teach skills of re-reading, editing and improving our work; even our youngest children in Reception become very adept at using their 'green pens' to improve their writing.

Handwriting

 

One of the things that the children do daily is practise their handwriting. This helps them  to record their ideas more easily and legibly. We use the Nelson pre-cursive font from when the children join us in Reception and we move onto joining letters in Year 1. We award badges as the children make progress.

Nelson Letter Formation