At Standhill Infants we aim to develop competent and confident writers who are willing to be resilient and have a go.  We want the children to see the value of writing and find pleasure and reward in the process of learning to write.

 We understand that the development of early oracy  and fine-motor skills, alongside exposure to stories and texts have a fundamental impact on a child’s growth as a writer. Our curriculum is therefore shaped by exciting, carefully considered texts and the development of vocabulary.  Before we have quality writers we need quality talkers and story tellers.

Writing is a complex skill to master with many elements. We are eager for our chldren to be creative writers as well as technically adept. We aim for our children to write for a variety of purposes and in all areas of the currciulum. We want our chidlren to strive for their writing to reflect good language skills as well as neat, carefully presented work that they can be proud of. good langusge 

Therefore to support the children in the development of their skills we use the following :

• TALK FOR WRITING
• Role Play
• DAILY PHONICS BUG CLUB
• Early fine motor activities
• A quality handwriting programme ISHA and handwriting practise.
• Quality modelling by adults.
• Opportunities throughout the curriculum to apply and practise their writing skills., inside and out.
• Real life experiences and wow moments to make writing meaningful.

At Standhill we use the ISHA scheme to promote quality handwriting and presentation. See the link below to go to the ISHA website for more information.

Teaching handwriting effectively impacts the wider curriculum and the development of the whole child offering, among others the following benefits:

• When children can write autonomously they can concentrate on what to write rather than how to write so their ideas and writing content will improve
• A significant impact on children's self-esteem, when they see beautiful writing which they have created with their own hand
• The huge effect of good handwriting on children's motivation and enjoyment for writing
• Develops a strong sense of pride which cannot be measured by attainment level or standardised testing
• Where children have good handwriting, and are proud of how their work looks, they become far more meticulous about spelling, punctuation, grammar and their use of language.
• When children take care to produce beautiful work they are more likely to take care in other areas of their life – e.g care for resources, care for each other.