Writing at SSMJ

At SS Mary and John, we are always finding new and creative ways to improve our writing! We teach English through a book-based curriculum where we explore a range of high quality and engaging texts; through this, we enjoy learning about a range of writing genres and applying our knowledge of grammar, different sentence structures and vocabulary to our independent writing. 

Below, you will find a list of skills/targets for each year group. We teach these throughout the year through specific grammar lessons and within our writing lessons. Children are then expected to use these skills in their independent writing.

Spelling at SSMJ

We know that in order to be amazing writers, we need to also be super spellers! Each year group has a list of spellings which they need to learn and these are taught throughout the year. We have weekly spelling lessons where we focus on learning spelling rules and applying these. We really enjoy our spelling lessons as we get to learn through fun activities. Keep your eyes peeled for photos from our exciting spelling lessons!

Each week, children will be given between 5 and 10 spellings for their homework. It is important that they are learning these at home so that they can then use these in their writing. 

Below, you can find the year 1 - year 6 spellings for children to continue to learn at home. For EYFS spellings, please refer to the phonic information on our phonics page. 

Handwriting

At SS Mary and John, we use cursive handwriting throughout Years 1 to 6. Reception learn their initial letter formation and then move onto pre-cursive letter formation in preparation for Year 1. Across the school, children write in the cursive style and we use letterjoin as a resource to support with this. 

Exciting writing opportunities at SSMJ...

Thomas the Gorilla

We were lucky enough to have another visit from Teach Rex and to learn all about 'Thomas the Gorilla' and his life story. Each year group were introduced to Thomas and had the opportunity to learn about the issue of deforestation and how this has impacted on the lives of Thomas, his family and other animals around the world. 

Every year group participated in grammar workshops around the issue of deforestation which prepared us for our writing units where we wrote persuasive speeches, balanced arguments and information texts about a range of issues which Thomas faced.

Teach Rex

We were lucky enough to have a visit from our very own dinosaur friend 'Jam the T-Rex'. Our exciting week started with the arrival of some mysterious eggs which we found in the playground. We then took part in exciting workshops where we got to meet Jam, discuss vocabulary we could use to describe Jam and look at grammatical structures when writing about dinosaurs. Everyone really enjoyed our T-Rex visit and each class has produced fantastic writing based upon this experience. We have written some amazing descriptions of Jam, stories about dinosaurs, information texts about T-Rex's and newspaper reports about the visit.

Art week

Recently,all classes completed a different project for Art week. As well as creating different art pieces, children also had the opportunity to read a book linked to that topic and create a piece of writing around that book. Here are some examples of the exciting work which Year 1 have been completing around their topic 'The Arctic'...