Writing

Writing Essence at Albany

At Albany Juniors, we teach writing by meeting the requirements of the national curriculum. We aim to deliver a high-quality education which teaches pupils to write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others. We aim to deliver quality first lessons that follow a structure/sequence of lessons which develop all of the literary skills that children require to be successful. Writing is taught through a wide variety of age related genres in each year group progressively.

Sequencing involves

• Selecting and reading high quality texts which enrich children’s knowledge and experiences.
• Teaching of challenging vocabulary with cross curricular links.
• Grammar and punctuation woven in to daily/weekly lessons
• Transcription (spelling and handwriting)
• Composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing)
• Planning, editing and evaluating their writing.
• Writing throughout the sequence and completing a final piece per unit/genre.
   
   
  Teaching is designed to take account of our five key curriculum drivers with skills and knowledge taken from our progression documents to ensure age appropriate content. Where appropriate, links are also made to ensure that children’s social, moral, spiritual and cultural development is enhanced through writing.

Rainbow Grammar

At Albany, we use Rainbow Grammar because it provides a rigorous, whole-school approach to teaching grammar, building knowledge logically and systematically over time. It makes the expectations of the national curriculum explicit, breaking objectives into precise, manageable steps so teachers know exactly what to teach and pupils develop secure foundational understanding before moving on to more complex concepts such as coordination, subordination, and levels of formality.

Rainbow Grammar is structured in a clear, progressive way that ensures children fully understand key concepts before applying them. As a result, pupils develop a strong understanding of sentence structure, improve their punctuation accuracy, increase the range and control of their writing, and learn how language choices create different effects.

The clear colour-coding system also makes learning engaging and interactive, helping children to visualise, manipulate, and confidently apply sentence structures in their own writing.

Handwriting

At our school, we recognise that fluent, legible handwriting is a vital foundation for successful learning, which is why we teach it through the Nelson Handwriting scheme. This structured, progressive programme supports children from the early stages of letter formation through to developing a confident, joined style, ensuring consistency and high expectations across the school. By explicitly teaching correct posture, pencil grip, letter formation and joins, the scheme helps pupils build muscle memory and automaticity, allowing them to write with increasing speed and accuracy. As handwriting becomes fluent, children are able to focus more fully on composition, vocabulary and the quality of their ideas, supporting stronger outcomes across the curriculum.

We also include regular dictation tasks in both our spelling and English lessons. This helps strengthen long-term recall, reinforces spelling and vocabulary knowledge in context, supports handwriting fluency and provides meaningful, assessment of their progress, all of which underpin confident, fluent writers.

Mrs Wordsmith

To address the well-documented vocabulary gap at Key Stage 2, we have introduced Mrs Wordsmith Words of the Week across the whole school, ensuring that ambitious vocabulary is explicitly taught and revisited in every English lesson.

This whole-school approach enables pupils to encounter, explore and apply high-quality, tier-two vocabulary in a structured and consistent way. Each word is carefully introduced, discussed in context and embedded through speaking, reading and writing activities.