At St Barnabas, our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes.  We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing.  Writing is taught through a number of different strategies. ‘Experience days’ immerse children in experiences linked to their writing and give them opportunities to explore vocabulary. Another strategy we use is a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that well-crafted, precise sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing. This is based upon the research of Jane Considine through the medium of ‘The Write Stuff’.

An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to three chunks:

1. I DO – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence
2. WE DO – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques
3. YOU DO – the children write their sentence following the model and have the opportunity to 'deepen the moment' where they can explore the plot point further and demonstrate their own creative sentences using their previous learning.

Children also have an opportunity to demonstrate their writing during an independent writing sequence.

All of our classroom environments ensure we are celebrating the writing of all children. Below are some photos of our 'Sentence Stacking' and writing displays around the school.