Skip to content ↓

English

This page explains how we teach writing at Park Street and how we support pupils to become confident, skilled and purposeful writers. Here, you will find information about our writing curriculum, our teaching approach and how writing progresses from Reception to Year 6.

Information about Reading and Phonics can be found here.

                                               

INTENT

At Park Street, our intent is to develop skilled, confident and motivated writers who can communicate effectively for a wide range of authentic purposes and audiences. Through HFL's ESSENTIAL WRITING curriculum, we ensure every child:

  • Builds deep knowledge of language, grammar, vocabulary and text structures.

  • Engages with high‑quality, diverse literature that inspires them to imitate, innovate and independently apply effective writing craft.

  • Understands the purpose of writing, whether to entertain, inform, persuade or discuss, and uses an appropriate repertoire of features for each.

  • Sees themselves as volitional writers, empowered to make authorial choices and motivated to write for real outcomes beyond the classroom.

  • Makes strong progress through a carefully sequenced and cumulative curriculum, with key skills revisited and deepened year-on-year.

Our overarching aim is for all children to become confident, fluent and purposeful writers who are well-prepared for the next stage of their education.

IMPLEMENTATION

We follow HFL's ESSENTIAL WRITING- an ambitious and progressive writing curriculum from Reception to Year 6, aligned closely with the National Curriculum and built around high‑quality literature. Each year group completes carefully structured units designed to build knowledge of grammar, composition and vocabulary in a logical, cumulative sequence.

Units are organised around four core writing purposes:

  • To entertain

  • To inform

  • To persuade

  • To discuss

Teachers use the ESSENTIAL WRITING materials to deliver a consistent, research‑informed approach to writing. This includes:

  • Using high‑quality model texts to highlight writing craft and explicitly teach genre features.

  • Building grammatical, compositional and transcriptional skills progressively within and across units.

  • Developing pupils’ discourse knowledge by analysing texts written for real audiences and purposes.

  • Drawing on strong subject knowledge and pedagogical guidance to scaffold learning and support adaptive teaching.

  • Ensuring writing outcomes are purposeful, with opportunities to publish, perform or share work to enhance authenticity and motivation.

  • Providing scaffolds and adaptive teaching strategies so pupils with SEND and other additional needs can access learning successfully.

  • Using long‑term overviews to ensure clear progression across year groups and cumulative development of writing skills.

  • Referring to model texts and exemplification to give clarity on age‑related expectations.

  • Embedding regular retrieval practice and revisiting of writing features to secure retention and continuous improvement.