Writing
Subject Rationale
At Stanbury Village School we use units of work from Literacy Shed+ as the foundation of our writing curriculum, providing a rich and engaging framework for developing pupils’ writing skills. Literacy Shed+ is designed as a comprehensive resource that fully complies with the National Curriculum, ensuring coverage of key objectives across year groups. It supports the teaching of writing through high-quality visual stimuli—such as short films and animations—combined with structured lesson plans, model texts, and writing prompts. These resources inspire creativity while reinforcing essential skills in grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and composition. Each unit is carefully sequenced to ensure clear progression and supports a range of writing genres, helping pupils build confidence, develop their voice, and write effectively for a variety of purposes and audiences.
Our curriculum creates a spiral curriculum, allowing key skills and genres to be revisited and reinforced over time. By returning to concepts at increasing levels of depth and complexity, students have multiple opportunities to practise, refine, and embed their learning. This approach supports long-term retention and ensures that knowledge and skills are securely developed across the curriculum.
Our curriculum embeds a wide range of essential skills to develop confident, capable writers. These include grammar, punctuation, and spelling, as well as sentence structure, vocabulary development, and text organisation. Pupils learn to write for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate tone and style across a variety of genres such as narratives, instructions, recounts, reports, and persuasive texts. In addition, we focus on planning, drafting, editing, and evaluating work to build independence and resilience in the writing process. Creativity, clarity, and coherence are at the heart of our curriculum, ensuring pupils are equipped with the tools they need to express themselves effectively.
Recognising that some teachers may lack confidence in teaching writing, our curriculum is designed to provide comprehensive support, including high-quality resources from The Literacy Shed, engaging visual stimuli, and clear planning to build subject knowledge and confidence. Each unit offers structured guidance, model texts, and scaffolded activities to ensure all pupils can access and enjoy the writing process. This approach supports the delivery of a high-quality writing curriculum that promotes progression, creativity, and achievement for all of our pupils.
