Writing at St Ives Infant and Nursery school will focus on developing the skills needed to write which will allow someone else to read their work. From the age when children join nursery they are encouraged to use tools to mark make and begin to give meaning to the marks they are making.
As they move into Reception, the children will already be able to write their name and hold a pencil correctly. Through their reception year, children will develop the skill of writing words, phrases and short sentences which they will then begin to punctuate. At this level children are developing the skill of 'sound talking' to spell words so their writing is phonetically decodable to a reader. We also focus on teaching tricky words, words that are commonly used but not decodable at their phonics phase.
In Key Stage 1 they begin to develop their understanding of sentence structure and writing for a purpose, and in year 2 will be writing for many different reasons such as story writing, fact file writing and recipe writing. As far as possible children are hooked into writing through wonderful stories which are rich in language that the children are encouraged to use in their own pieces of writing.
Handwriting is taught in a precursive style from reception, enabling the children to begin to form their letters without effort once they join year 2. This supports the children's journey as they move from the infant school to the juniors.