Writing
Growing A Community of Writers
Where Writers Begin ...
At Tavistock Primary and Nursery School, our youngest writers take their first steps into the world of storytelling through Drawing Club — a joyful, imaginative approach inspired by Greg Bottrill. Each week, children journey into a new story or animation, discovering rich vocabulary and bringing tales to life through talk, drawing, and mark-making. From their earliest “secret codes” and labels to their very first sentences, children learn that every mark has meaning and every idea has value.
Through Drawing Club, we nurture the will to write as much as the skill — imagination and language flourish side by side. Carefully planned sessions weave together phonics (supported by Little Wandle programmes of learning), vocabulary, fine motor skills, and storytelling, ensuring children build strong transcriptional foundations while developing a lifelong love of writing.
Creating a community of confident, skilled writers with ideas worth sharing.
At Tavistock Primary and Nursery School, writing is an adventure. We help children find their voice, develop their ideas, and express themselves with confidence and creativity. Using Bookwrites teaching sequences, our lessons are carefully structured to build strong foundations in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and composition — while always keeping high-quality texts that inspire the joy of writing front and centre.
From imaginative stories and poems to reports, letters, and persuasive writing, our children explore a wide range of genres and styles. Writing can be cross-curricular, helping children deepen their learning across all subjects, from science to history, while discovering that their ideas have power and purpose.
Our classrooms are Communities of Writers, full of opportunities to write, reflect, and share. Children proudly develop their Journals, where they reflect on themselves as writers with a ‘Me as a Writer’ page. They also enjoy Just Write sessions, where they have complete freedom to write whatever they like — stories, poems, reflections — celebrating independence, imagination, and joy in writing.
We celebrate every stage of the writing journey, nurturing confident communicators who are not only skilled but inspired to write throughout their lives.
Mastering the Craft
Mastering the mechanics of writing gives children the freedom to express themselves with clarity and confidence.
At Tavistock Primary and Nursery School, we believe that strong writing starts with mastering the essential skills. Through Bookwrites teaching sequences, Little Wandle and the No Nonsense Spelling and Grammar programmes, children learn spelling, handwriting, and sentence-level techniques in a structured and purposeful way — but that’s just the start.
Children regularly practise and consolidate these transcriptional skills, building accuracy and fluency in their writing. Dictation sessions are used as a key tool to reinforce spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure, while high expectations of handwriting and presentation ensure every piece of work reflects pride and care.
By combining structured teaching with regular practice, children develop confidence in the mechanics of writing, giving them the foundation to express themselves clearly, creatively, and with precision.
We are committed to ensuring inclusive practice so that all our children, regardless of their ability, see themselves as writers and are given opportunity and appropriate support to further develop their writing skills. See the document below for some of the ways in which we do this at Tavistock Primary and Nursery School.