This year at Poulton, we have adopted the “I Am A Clever Writer” approach for our writing lessons. This is a skills-based, carefully sequenced approach and fully aligned with the new Writing Framework (2025). Writing is taught through clearly identified skills, ensuring children build confidence, accuracy, and independence as writers across all subjects.

Teaching begins with Assessment for Learning (AfL) to identify which writing skills need to be consolidated and which new skills should be introduced, using our Progression of Skills document to ensure consistent progress. Teachers then select the most appropriate genre to teach these skills, supported by high-quality stimuli and meaningful curriculum links wherever possible. Most writing sequences are concise and purposeful, typically lasting no longer than one week.

A key feature of our approach is the use of a WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like). Teachers create and share a high-quality model text that clearly demonstrates the new skill alongside previously taught skills. This shared outcome is revisited daily and includes ambitious vocabulary and visual support to reduce cognitive load and clarify expectations.

To support independence, new skills are added to a Clever Writer Checklist, which is displayed in classrooms and built upon throughout the year. This checklist empowers children by making success criteria explicit and transferable, ensuring high standards of writing are maintained across English and wider curriculum subjects such as science and RE.

New skills are explicitly taught and modelled through sentences linked to the WAGOLL, with interactive Working Walls developed through class discussion. These walls support vocabulary development, sentence construction, and accurate application of skills. Children initially practise new skills in isolation before embedding them through daily writing opportunities.

Live marking plays a vital role in assessment, enabling immediate feedback, the correction of misconceptions, and celebration of effective writing. As skills are embedded, children write daily, including regular independent writing opportunities where success criteria, working walls, and the Clever Writer Checklist support high-quality outcomes. The WAGOLL is removed during independent writing to encourage originality and independence.

Each sequence concludes with a Star Write, an extended, independent piece of writing where children recreate the WAGOLL, bringing together all taught skills. This provides valuable formative assessment that informs future planning.

Alongside composition, transcription skills are prioritised. Handwriting is taught explicitly, with a strong focus on accurate letter formation before fluency and joining. Spelling rules are carefully revisited through WAGOLLs, modelling, and live marking to ensure accountability and retention.

Our writing approach is underpinned by consistent monitoring and support from the Subject Lead and Senior Leadership Team, ensuring fidelity and high expectations across the school. Through this structured, evidence-informed approach, children develop the skills, confidence, and enjoyment needed to become successful writers.