Writing Sequence (Year 1)
The Year 1 writing programme at Woodthorpe focuses on building secure foundational skills through a clear, progressive approach. Developed in response to national research, the programme prioritises quality over quantity, ensuring pupils master sentence-level understanding rather than producing extended pieces. The emphasis is on accurate transcription – handwriting and spelling – supported by daily practice of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and dictated sentences to reduce cognitive load. Oral rehearsal is central, helping pupils link spoken and written language and develop structured sentences.
The curriculum aims to secure understanding of simple sentences (independent clauses) as the building blocks of writing, using scaffolds like Colourful Semantics where needed. The first week focuses on letter recognition, formation of upper and lower case letters, correct pencil grip, and sitting in a ready-to-write position. Activities include letter formation practice, matching games, alphabet songs, and fine motor tasks, with modelling and graduated release strategies (I do, we do, you do) to ensure success. Teachers adapt pedagogy to suit class needs, using whole-class or small-group approaches as appropriate.
Planning Structure
Each unit of work follows a clear structure of imitation and innovation as well as including ‘Have a go Writes’ and ‘Time to Shine Writes’.
Have a go Write
A ‘Have a go Write’ is completed at the beginning of each unit and informs planning depending on what the children need to work out.
Imitation
The main focus of the imitation stage is storytelling focused on a model text, which enables the children to explore text features, sentence structure, language patterns and how a specific text-type is composed. Model texts are provided by the English lead before a unit of work is completed.
Innovation
Children use their in-depth understanding of the model text to write their own version.
Time to Shine Write (Invent)
The ‘Time to Shine Write’ is completed at the end of each unit of writing. The same Writer’s Toolkit as the ‘Have a go Write’ is given and stuck into Writing books. This provides a valuable assessment opportunity and shows the progress the children have made over the course of a unit.
