There are two main reasons why we write:

1) To make meaning;

2) To communicate meaning.

At Breadsall Hill Top Primary School, writing for an authentic purpose sits at the heart of our writing curriculum.  Writing instruction can be broken down into two parts:

1) Transcription - the physical process of writing;

2) Composition - crafting the text.

As with reading, children's journey to becoming independent writers begins in EYFS and KS1, where children begin to further develop their vocabularies.  Talk is the foundation of all writing, allowing children to think about how to connect the ideas in their heads without making them concrete by writing them down.  As their ability to express themselves orally develops, children are then taught the physical skills of writing such as completing exercises to strengthen the bones and muscles in their hands, how to hold a writing implement correctly and how to make marks on paper.

Through using the Pearl Phonics scheme, children develop their phonic knowledge to include phoneme and grapheme correspondence, enabling children to recognise the graphemes (letters) which relate to the sound they want to write down to create the word (for more information, see the Phonics curriculum link).

As the children become more secure with their transcription skills, we then begin to weave in the composition skills that children will require to 'craft' their own pieces of writing.  As with reading, this takes more precedence in the Spring Term of Year 2 with the introduction of discrete writing lessons.