At St. Mary’s, we believe that the ability to write with confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. We endeavour to enable all of our children to communicate effectively in their spoken language, as well as in using the printed word in a wide range of contexts. We teach this through the ‘Sentence Stacking’ approach.
Writing is a complex process which requires many skills, such as handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, grammar, punctuation and awareness of text structure and organisation. We believe that all children should leave St. Mary’s as confident, fluent writers, with an extensive vocabulary to adequately prepare them for later life.
At St. Mary’s, we have adopted the sentence stacking approach to writing. Core to this approach is quality teacher modelling to demonstrate the key skills and composition of writing expected of the pupils in each year group and across all genres. Within writing lessons, less confident pupils are given the support and tools to enable them to achieve at an age-related standard, wherever possible. More confident writers are given ample opportunities throughout the writing process to demonstrate a greater depth of understanding through carefully planned stretch and challenge elements. In addition, they are given opportunities to write in genres of their choice. To ensure that all pupils are appropriately challenged throughout each writing lesson, teachers and learning support assistants use targeted questioning and effective in-the-moment feedback.
Across the school, we use high quality, language-rich texts which enthuse and challenge pupils, in addition to using high quality video stimulus and embarking on their real life experiences, where possible. This approach gives pupils opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences, which inspires them to write. The use of Alan Peat sentence types is embedded from Year 2 to Year 6 to develop sentence structure and text composition. These sentence types are progressive.
Each unit of work begins with an experience lesson to ‘hook’ the pupils into learning. Further experience lessons may be included throughout the unit to sustain engagement. Throughout a unit, key skills are taught and practised in context. Pupils are encouraged to ‘talk’ through their ideas, share their ideas and magpie the ideas of others. Pupils are given plenty of opportunities to self-edit within each lesson as demonstrated in the editing progression document.
After each sentence stacked piece of writing, an application write is planned to allow the children to write independently and apply learned skills.
As a Voice 21 school, we model a high standard of talk and writing to secure high expectations. Pupils are given ample opportunities throughout the curriculum to develop their speaking and listening skills, which in turn has a positive impact on extended writing. Writing is moderated using the CtKCC writing moderation tool.
The importance of cursive handwriting, as outlined in the ‘Magic Link’ handwriting scheme is enforced in all subject areas to promote legibility, neat presentation and self-pride.
Spelling is taught progressively across the school through Spelling Shed, which includes learning of the Statutory Spelling Lists for each year group.
Purposes for Writing
Writing Genre Progression
Exciting Sentences
Throughout the school, we are using a system for teaching writing developed by the educational specialist Alan Peat. We teach children how to use particular types of sentences, which have a handy name, so that children understand what is meant whichever class they are in in the school. The sentence types are designed to help children to write exciting, sophisticated pieces of writing that use the right tone for their purpose. Some sentence types are more appropriate to non-fiction, and others, to fiction writing.
📚❤️ Friday Favourites! ❤️📚
Another Friday celebrating our love of reading at St Mary’s! Our children shared their favourite reads and chatted about what makes them special. 💬✨
From stories and comics to fascinating non-fiction, there’s something for everyone to enjoy!
#readingstm #englishstm #FridayFavouritesstm #NationalYearOfReadingstm …
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📚✨ St Mary’s takes on a world record! ✨📚
Yesterday, St Mary’s joined readers across the world for the Take 10 to Read GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ attempt! 🌍
Organised by the National Literacy Trust and the British Council, the challenge aimed to set a new record for the most people reading online in 12 hours as part of the National Year of Reading 2026.
Our children took ten minutes to read together and celebrate the joy of reading. What a wonderful opportunity to share our love of books while being part of something so exciting! ❤️
Fingers crossed for a new world record! 🤞🏆
#readingstm #englishstm #nationalyearofreadingstm …
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✍️✨ Young Writers ✨✍️
We are so proud of Romy and Charlie in Year 4 who have joined the Spark Young Writers group at Newcastle-under-Lyme Library! 📚🌟
The group meets on Saturdays throughout the year so it is wonderful to see them showing such commitment to developing their writing beyond the classroom. Through workshops led by professional writers, they’ll have the chance to build their creativity, confidence and writing skills. 📝💭
What fantastic dedication! Well done, Romy and Charlie! 👏✨
Staffordshire Libraries
#WritingSTM #EnglishSTM …
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🎭📚✨ National Poetry Day 2026 ✨📚🎭
This morning, we celebrated National Poetry Day with a fantastic whole-school assembly, and what a performance it was! 🌟
Each year group took to the stage to perform a poem they had been rehearsing during their Readers’ Theatre sessions. From wonderful expression and clear voices to brilliant actions and confident performances, our children absolutely brought the words to life! 🎤👏 Their fantastic oracy skills were on full display and we were so proud of every single performer. ❤️
Our poetry line-up was:
❤️✨ Year 1 – All of Me
🦉🐱 Year 2 – The Owl and the Pussycat
🌿🐞 Year 3 – Nature Trail
🐉✨ Year 4 – The Tale of Custard the Dragon
🎉🗣️ Year 5 – The Word Party
⚠️📜 Year 6 – A Cautionary Verse
A huge well done to all of our poetry superstars! 🌟 What a brilliant way to celebrate the joy of poetry, performance and spoken language across St Mary’s. 🎬🎭📖
#NationalPoetryDaystm #Poetrystm #Englishstm #readingstm #Oracystm #Year1stm #Year2stm #Year3stm #Year4stm #Year5stm #Year6stm …
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