Writing

Our Writing Curriculum

Intent

At Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School, we believe writing is a gift that empowers children to communicate their thoughts, deepen their understanding, and express their God-given voice to the world. Our writing curriculum aims to develop confident, reflective, and purposeful writers who use writing to explore learning, express creativity, and live out their faith.

Our intent is that all pupils:
• Develop the skills to write with clarity, accuracy, creativity, and purpose.
• Think like writers by making thoughtful choices about vocabulary, structure, audience, and the impact of their words.
• Write like writers by crafting, editing, refining, and developing their ideas to create meaningful and engaging texts.
• Understand writing as a process that involves planning, drafting, revising, and refining.
• Use writing as a tool to communicate ideas, values, and understanding across the curriculum.
• Take pride in their work and recognise writing as a powerful means to inspire, inform, and transform.

Guided by evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), our curriculum prioritises explicit teaching of the writing process, intentional grammar and spelling instruction, high-quality modelling, and regular opportunities for purposeful practice supported by meaningful feedback. Through this approach, pupils develop the confidence, creativity, and independence to see themselves as writers.

Implementation

Writing at Our Lady of Lourdes is taught through a carefully sequenced and cyclical approach, rooted in the principles of Immersion, Imitation and Innovation, and underpinned by the writing process of planning, drafting, editing, revising and publishing.

Across all stages:

·        Writing is organised into cycles, allowing time to build knowledge, practise skills and apply learning securely.

·        Editing and proofreading are taught using structured approaches where pupils refine both meaning and accuracy.

·        Presentation expectations are clear and progressive, promoting pride, care and professionalism in written work.

·        Spelling is taught systematically: through phonics in KS1 and a structured, rule-based and morphological approach in KS2, supported by Rosenshein’s Principles of Instruction.

·        Assessment is ongoing and purposeful, using the Integra Framework, National Curriculum objectives, shared success criteria, writing rubrics and regular moderation to ensure consistency and progression.

Impact

As a result of the recent introduction of our immersion–imitation–innovation approach to writing, impact is emerging and continues to develop following a period of inconsistent practice and a previously weaker curriculum.

·        Pupils are beginning to develop increased confidence, fluency and independence as writers as consistent structures and expectations are embedded.

·        Early evidence shows improving progression in composition, grammar, spelling and presentation, although this is not yet fully secure across all year groups.

·        Pupils are starting to transfer writing skills across subjects, supported by clearer modelling and shared approaches.

·        Children are increasingly able to talk about writing as a process and are becoming more willing to edit, revise and improve their work.

·        Writing outcomes show early signs of greater clarity, purpose and creativity as pupils engage with high-quality models and structured support.

·        Teachers now share a clearer understanding of expectations, assessment and progression, leading to greater consistency across the school.

As the curriculum continues to embed, the intended impact is that, by the time pupils leave Our Lady of Lourdes, they will be equipped with the skills, confidence and faith-informed values needed to use writing as a powerful tool for learning, expression and contribution to the wider world.