At Hillside, we work hard to provide our children with a wide-ranging writing curriculum. We believe the system of modelling and scaffolding writing is the best way to develop our children into skilled, confident writers.  For our youngest learners, we ensure there is a fulsome range of mark-making opportunities in the early years, ranging from tracing in sand and foam to drawing in the outside areas with large chalk and paints.

We ensure children have a wide variety of writing stimulus in order to develop their creativity and excitement for writing.

Our English lessons use a wide range of books that support our culturally diverse community. In addition, writing opportunities are carefully woven into our topic-based curriculum and ensure all areas of the curriculum have quality writing opportunities.

We utilise Talk4writing strategies and Literacy Tree texts and stimulus as a basis for developing writing.

Handwriting

We utilise letter- join handwriting scheme from Reception to Year 2.  Letter-join facilitates the Framework’s aim for the progressive development of handwriting skills throughout the whole school. It starts with Early Years children learning to hold their pencil comfortably for writing through a range of fun activities that develop fine and gross motor skills and strength, in addition to handwriting instruction and practice