Our English Vision: Speaking. Listening. Writing.

At John Wilkinson Primary School and Nursery, we view language as both a vital communication tool and a key to personal growth and societal contribution. As James Britton once said, “Writing floats on a sea of talk,” and we fully embrace this belief in our approach to English. We aim to create a community where every child grows into a confident communicator, both in speech and in writing.

Language, talk and text are not confined to English lessons alone; they sit at the heart of learning across the whole curriculum, enabling pupils to access knowledge, express understanding and make meaningful connections across subjects.

Grounded in our core curriculum drivers – communication, creativity, craft, and community – our English curriculum equips pupils with the skills and empathy to express themselves, appreciate diverse perspectives, connect ideas across subjects, and advocate for meaningful change.

Our vision is to inspire a generation of young writers who not only excel in technical skill but are passionate about using their written and spoken voices to make a positive difference. Through our commitment to high-quality English teaching, we empower children to become articulate, compassionate individuals who can influence their communities and the wider world.

Intent

Our English curriculum is designed to ignite a lifelong love of reading, writing, vocabulary, and discussion. We want all children to develop into confident, self-motivated, and resilient speakers, readers, and writers.

Writing sits at the heart of our curriculum, from the Foundation Stage to Year 6. We provide purposeful opportunities for pupils to refine and apply their writing skills across a wide range of subjects. Our goal is for every child to plan, draft, edit, and publish writing that shows a growing command of grammar, structure, and vocabulary – and a real sense of pride.

We make strong links between reading and writing, using high-quality texts to inspire vocabulary, grammar, and composition. All writing at John Wilkinson is taught through our bespoke Beautiful Writing Process, a school-designed approach that brings coherence, creativity, and clarity to every unit of work.

Implementation

Our English curriculum is underpinned by agreed whole-school approaches, shared systems and consistent lesson structures. This ensures high-quality teaching across classes and prevents valuable curriculum time being lost to pupils learning new approaches or routines.

Because pupils are familiar with our structures for learning, cognitive effort is focused on developing knowledge, skills and understanding rather than navigating how learning works. Within these agreed approaches, teachers retain professional agency to adapt teaching, respond to pupils’ needs and bring learning to life, while maintaining fidelity to curriculum intent.

Daily Writing Lessons 

Writing is a daily priority. Every class engages in high-quality, carefully structured writing lessons that follow the National Curriculum expectations. Teachers adapt lessons to meet the needs of all learners, ensuring access and challenge for every pupil. Each half term, a high-quality text forms the foundation of the unit, enriched with drama, spoken language, and cross-curricular links.

The John Wilkinson Beautiful Writing Process

Our Beautiful Writing Process is unique to John Wilkinson Primary School. It provides a clear, consistent approach that guides children from first ideas to final publication, helping them see themselves as writers with purpose and voice.

Each unit follows a structured sequence:

• Immerse and Retrieve: Pupils explore a high-quality text, discuss themes, and retrieve prior learning to make meaningful connections.

• Model and Practise: Teachers explicitly model key grammar and compositional skills through shared and guided writing.

• Draft and Edit: Pupils apply new learning independently, using teacher, peer, and self-feedback to refine and improve their work as they go.

• Publish and Celebrate: Final pieces are shared across classes, with parents,  through displays and assemblies, giving pupils pride and purpose in their writing. Every piece of writing within our Beautiful Writing Process has a clear purpose and audience – whether to inform, entertain, persuade, or inspire – ensuring that children understand the real impact and value of their words.

This consistent, whole-school process ensures that every child experiences writing as a journey of creativity, independence, and growth.

Grammar and Punctuation 

Grammar and punctuation are taught both within writing lessons and through dedicated application sessions. Each half term, pupils focus on key grammar concepts taught in a cyclical way to reinforce understanding and mastery. These skills are directly applied within the Beautiful Writing Process to make grammar meaningful and functional. Grammar, punctuation and sentence structure are revisited regularly so that pupils build automaticity, accuracy and confidence over time.

Pathways to Write 

We use the Pathways to Write framework to support the progression and coverage of writing skills across each year group. It ensures that pupils encounter a rich variety of text types and genres, building technical skill and compositional confidence.

Pathways to Write defines what is taught, ensuring progression and coverage are secure, while the Beautiful Writing Process defines how it is taught through consistent modelling, feedback, editing and independent application that is distinctively John Wilkinson. Together, these approaches ensure teaching is coherent, purposeful and responsive across the school.

Foundation Skills and Transcription

Strong foundation skills underpin all success in writing at John Wilkinson. We teach transcriptional skills explicitly, ensuring pupils develop accuracy and automaticity in spelling, handwriting, sentence construction and punctuation. By securing these essentials, pupils are freed to focus on composition, vocabulary choice and authorial intent.

Foundational knowledge is revisited and built cumulatively, allowing pupils to write with increasing fluency, confidence and independence. This careful balance between accuracy and creativity ensures that technical skill supports, rather than limits, pupils’ ability to express ideas clearly and effectively.

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Our Approach to Spelling

In Reception and Key Stage 1, spelling is taught through daily systematic phonics and early spelling instruction, enabling pupils to apply phoneme-grapheme correspondence accurately and confidently. Spelling knowledge is reinforced through reading, writing and structured practice, supporting fluency and transcriptional accuracy. This means that children learn to spell words by applying the sounds and spelling patterns they are learning in class.

Each day:

• Children are taught a new sound or spelling pattern.
• They practise spelling words that include this focus sound.

• They use strategies such as saying the sounds aloud, segmenting (breaking words into sounds), and writing them down.

Each week:

• Children bring home 8 spelling words:

  • 6 words linked to the sound/s they have been learning

  • 2 High Frequency Words (HFW) or Common Exception Words (CEW)

High Frequency and Common Exception Words are words that:

• Appear often in reading and writing
• May not follow regular phonics rules, so need to be learned by sight and practice

How parents can help at home:

• Practise spelling little and often (5–10 minutes a day)
• Encourage your child to say the sounds as they write
• Use fun methods like writing in sand, saying words out loud, or making up sentences
• Focus on effort and progress rather than perfection

Key Stage 2 Spelling and Vocabulary

At John Wilkinson Primary School, we have developed a bespoke KS2 Morphemic Teaching and Targeted Review Programme to ensure that every child becomes a confident, accurate speller with a rich and growing vocabulary. Our approach is rooted in research and designed to strengthen both transcription and comprehension by teaching pupils how words work – not just how they look.

Through morphemic teaching, pupils learn to understand and apply root words, prefixes, and suffixes. This enables them to spell and decode a wide range of unfamiliar words, make connections between word meanings, and use more sophisticated vocabulary in their writing. Alongside this, each child has personal spelling targets drawn from diagnostic assessments of high-frequency words, ensuring that the essentials are fully secured while pupils continue to progress with age-appropriate statutory spellings.

All Key Stage 2 classes (Years 3–6) follow the same spelling and vocabulary cycle. This means that pupils in Years 3–4 and Years 5–6 revisit the same structure of learning across two years, allowing them to embed knowledge, strengthen retrieval, and commit key spellings to long-term memory. By cycling through five teaching and review phases each year, pupils are repeatedly exposed to and assessed on their spellings, building fluency and confidence over time.

Each week, pupils focus on six words – four from the statutory lists and two from their personal targets – learning one new word per day through explicit modelling, definition work, and multisensory spelling practice. These words are also practised at home through weekly homework activities, helping to reinforce school learning and strengthen long-term retention. Individual target words are reviewed termly to ensure progress and to update each child’s personalised spelling list.

This carefully structured approach reduces cognitive load, making spelling accessible to all learners, including those with dyslexia, while promoting accuracy and independence. Frequent review weeks, retrieval practice, and application in context ensure that spelling knowledge is retained and applied, not simply tested. By revisiting key patterns and personal targets across a two-year cycle, children secure foundational spelling knowledge and develop an enduring curiosity about language.

The impact of this programme is clear: pupils spell with increasing accuracy, understand how language is constructed, and use an ambitious vocabulary in both speech and writing. Our structured, inclusive approach ensures that spelling supports wider success in reading and writing, contributing directly to our vision of working together to unlock potential – empowering every child to thrive.

RADY and SEND

At John Wilkinson Primary School, our writing curriculum is guided by the principle that every child is a writer. We are committed to ensuring equity, inclusion, and representation for all learners, aligned with our RADY (Raising the Attainment of Disadvantaged Youngsters) principles.

As a RADY school, we set ambitious and aspirational targets for all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged or have SEND. Progress towards these targets is reviewed closely to ensure timely support and challenge, enabling every child to make strong progress from their starting point.

Our approach ensures that all pupils, including those with SEND and those eligible for pupil premium, can access, enjoy, and succeed within our Beautiful Writing Process. Teaching is responsive and adaptive, using strategies such as targeted questioning, modelling, scaffolding, and pre-teaching of vocabulary to meet individual needs and remove barriers to learning.

Formative assessment and responsive feedback are central to our practice, enabling every pupil to make progress from their own starting point. Success is celebrated for effort, improvement, and attainment, ensuring every child experiences pride and purpose as a writer.

Children with SEND are fully included in the writing journey, with adaptations that support communication, independence, and creativity. Every pupil’s progress is valued and celebrated as part of our inclusive school community.

Enrichment and Academic Outcomes

Our enrichment programme is deliberately aligned to our English curriculum and is designed to strengthen academic outcomes rather than sit alongside learning. Enrichment experiences provide meaningful contexts for reading, writing and talk, deepening understanding and embedding vocabulary.

A particular focus is placed on oracy and vocabulary. Through performances, debates, assemblies, visits, visitors and curriculum-linked projects, pupils rehearse language, encounter ambitious vocabulary and apply their learning with confidence. These opportunities strengthen comprehension, written expression and spoken communication across the curriculum.

Confidence and Creativity
Our pupils write with imagination, purpose, and growing independence. They understand that writing is a tool for communication and change, not just a classroom task. Through the Beautiful Writing Process, children learn to take risks, craft language thoughtfully, and take pride in their finished work.

Progress and Mastery
Progress is evident through regular cold and hot writing tasks, which allow pupils to reflect, edit, and apply new learning. Feedback is used purposefully to move learning forward, ensuring that all pupils – including those identified through our RADY approach and those with SEND – make strong, measurable progress from their own starting points.

Consistency Across Year Groups
Our John Wilkinson framework, moderation practices, and shared expectations ensure consistency and high standards in writing across the school. Staff work collaboratively to review progress, celebrate success, and refine practice through continuous professional development and feedback.

Partnership with Parents
We are developing strong links with parents and carers to support writing at home. Over the coming year, we will be sharing guidance, resources, and workshops to help families understand our Beautiful Writing Process and how to support spelling, grammar, and composition. Our aim is to strengthen the home–school partnership so that every child is supported and celebrated as a writer.

Celebration and Pride
Writing is showcased throughout school life – from class displays to assemblies. Pupils share their work with peers and parents, understanding that their words have purpose and impact. These celebrations nurture motivation, ownership, and pride.

Empowered Communicators
Through our coherent, inclusive, and joyful approach, we are building a community of writers who are confident, reflective, and ready to make their voices heard – both within school and in the wider world.

Writing and Grammar Progression

Our writing and grammar curriculum follows a clear sequence that ensures pupils build knowledge, understanding, and skill year by year. Progression documents show how each grammar concept, writing skill, and genre is introduced, revisited, and mastered from Early Years to Year 6.

This structure ensures coherence across all year groups, with clear expectations for vocabulary, sentence structure, punctuation, and composition. It also supports teachers in adapting teaching to meet individual needs while maintaining high standards for all learners.

The John Wilkinson Beautiful Writing Process underpins this progression, providing the consistency, reflection, and celebration that help children grow into confident, independent writers.

Writing progression document

Grammar progression document

Writing Long Term Plan

These documents outline:

• The progression of writing and grammar skills from Early Years to Year 6.

• The sequence of teaching and revisiting key concepts.

• How genres, purposes, and audiences are mapped across the school year.

• How our Beautiful Writing Process supports mastery and independence at each stage.

Together, they ensure that every child’s writing journey at John Wilkinson is consistent, ambitious, and rooted in real purpose.