Intent: 

At Hindley Junior and Infant School, we recognise that handwriting is valuable tool for communication, learning and self-expression. According to the EEF, handwriting sets pupils up to succeed in subjects across the curriculum, and enables pupils to express their views, channelling their artistic and creative selves. We also recognise, as Graham, Harris and Hebert (2011) state, that ‘handwriting consumes an inordinate amount of cognitive effort, until it becomes automatic and fluent’, and it is because of this that teaching staff at HJI are consistently striving to improve pupils’ handwriting style.  

Throughout school, we use Letter-join’s on-line handwriting resource and Lesson Planners as the basis of our handwriting policy as it covers all the requirements of the National Curriculum. 

We aim for all children to develop the following:  

• A neat, legible and speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters, which leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing. 

• A high expectation for their own presentation of written work. 

• The understanding of the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly. 

Implementation: 
All teaching staff are encouraged to model the printed or cursive style of handwriting chosen for each year group in our school in all their handwriting, whether on whiteboards, displays or in pupils’ books. Pupils will experience coherence and continuity in the learning and teaching of handwriting across all school years and be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their work. Our objective is to help pupils enjoy learning and developing their handwriting with a sense of achievement and pride.  

Handwriting is a cross-curricular task and will be taken into consideration during all lessons. Formal teaching of handwriting will be carried out regularly and systematically at the start of Writing lessons to ensure the development of handwriting. 

Children will start handwriting using a soft pencil. When fine motor skills have been established, a handwriting pen will be used.  

Impact:  

Our consistent approach to the teaching of handwriting, ensures our pupils develop a handwriting style that is fluent and legible in order to create a sense of pride and to avoid the spread of ‘The Presentation Effect’, whereby non-content factors such as handwriting, influence readers’ judgements about the quality of ideas written in a text. Improving legibility through consistently-teaching handwriting results in statistically greater legibility and fluency. Additionally, it will produce statistically significant gains in the quality and length too, thus reducing, and in some cases, removing the barrier towards developing the process of writing.  

Writing Process:  

Intent:  

At Hindley Junior and Infant School, our Writing curriculum aims to provide all pupils with the necessary transcription and composition skills required to speak and write fluently in order to effectively and independently communicate their ideas and emotions to others through writing. Successful teaching of Writing at Hindley Junior and Infant School recognises the significance of a language-rich environment alongside recognition of how knowledge of the world and our ideas of the world are describable through a wide vocabulary. To support this, high-quality, grammatically-accurate discussion is effectively and consistently modelled and promoted throughout all year groups by teachers and teaching assistants, encouraging pupils to use similar vocabulary and phrasing when conversing, expressing themselves, building upon initial thoughts or contributing to discussions, consequently developing pupils’ vocabulary thus positively impacting writing ability overall. Teachers also understand the importance of how Reading improves pupils’ knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammatical structures; therefore, through the use of high-quality texts, and regardless of abilities, pupils are encouraged to read as writers, and write as readers, developing expertise in reading, writing and spoken language: the pillars of progression.  

Implementation:  

Our writing curriculum understands the need for developing competence within the two dimensions of transcription and composition in addition to developing the skills of planning, revising and evaluating pupils’ writing. To support our pupils throughout their primary educational career and beyond, our writing curriculum follows a cyclical, evidence-informed process, equipping pupils with the crucial skills which are applicable to all contexts, purposes and audiences. Lessons are taught based upon the objectives outlined within the National Curriculum and follow a six-part writing process which includes a gather, plan, write, edit and revise stage, and for Key Stage Two pupils, a final piece stage. Writing lessons are taught on a whole-class basis, and for pupils who may require further support, or challenge, a wide range of effective and adaptive teaching strategies are utilised to accelerate progress. 

Gather: 

• Allows pupils to become fully immersed in the writing experience 

• Exposed to high-quality example texts in order to develop a broad knowledge of the world alongside appropriate vocabulary, phrasing and sentence structure.  

• Provide pupils with the opportunity to form, articulate and communicate their ideas through a range of engaging activities. 

• Age-appropriate grammatical skills, linked to text genres, are taught here, allowing pupils to express, shape and craft ideas meaningfully and with increasing confidence.  

   

Plan: 

• Pupils are supported in organising their ideas coherently for themselves as authors, and others as readers, using templates where necessary.  

   

Write:  

• Independently produce their first draft, transferring previously-taught skills.  

   

Edit:  

• Spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors are addressed during this stage. 

   

Revise:  

• To have greater impact upon the reader, or to create further cohesion, pupils may revise part, or all of their writing.  

   

Final Piece: 

• To evaluate the success of their writing, pupils produce a final version of their writing piece.