Writing
How to help your child with writing at home
Read Together
Reading and writing go hand in hand. Read books, stories, and poems with your child. Discuss characters, plots, and ideas. Encourage them to write their own versions or sequels.
Reading Spine and Recommended Reads 2024
Motor skills
Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. Typically, they are categorized into two groups: gross and fine motor skills.
Fine motor skills involve smaller movements in the wrists, hands, fingers, feet, and toes. For example, they participate in smaller actions such as picking up objects between the thumb and finger, writing carefully, and even blinking.
Gross motor skills, on the other hand, involve movements of the arms, legs, and other large body parts. They participate in actions such as crawling, running, and swimming.
These two motor skills work together to provide coordination.
Gross Motor Skills:
Efficient control of the larger muscle groups in the neck, shoulder, and trunk is necessary to maintain stability for the fingers and hands to move to complete the handwriting task. As children develop, control and stability begin at the trunk and progress to the elbow, wrist, and finally, the hand. Fine motor skills are developed from gross motor skills.
- Upper body strength development (climbing, running, throwing and catching, playing with watering jugs etc)
- Balance development (stepping stones, following chalk lines/markings on the ground, balancing beans bags on heads whilst walking, egg and spoon races etc)
- Upper arm movements (using large paint brushes, sweeping brushes, parachute games, pushing or pulling toys, using wheel borrows)
These are just a few examples of how you can develop gross motor skills.
Fine Motor Skills:
Young children need to be able to hold and use scissors and pencils appropriately before using them in a classroom context. We cannot expect them to be able to write if they haven’t yet developed the strength needed in their hands and fingers.
- Playing with playdough (squeezing, squishing, pushing, pulling, moulding, hiding small objects in the play dough, rolling and using the cutters.)
- Threading beads/pasta/cheerios, making bracelets with string or loombands,
- Using clothes pegs (hanging up washing, adding the correct number of pegs to the board, building words with letters on pegs.)
- Sewing,
- Popping bubble wrap, using plastic tweezers and chopsticks.
- Typing on keyboards, using scissors, putting coins in piggy banks.
- Playing with lego.
These are just a few examples of how you can develop fine motor skills.
Phonics
Phonics plays a huge role in writing. We will support our youngest children by teaching phonics with a systematic and consistent approach. This ensures that explicit links are made between the teaching of phonics and applying spelling strategies from the moment they begin to write and spell. We will equip children with the principles underpinning word construction (phonemic, morphemic and etymological), to enable them to spell accurately.
We are a Read Write Inc school. Please regularly access your child’s phonics sway to see what sounds they are learning to read and write.
Spellings
At William Hulme’s Primary Phase, we hope to create a culture of ‘word consciousness’ and support children with their spellings through vocabulary knowledge-based spelling strategies. Pupils receive explicit teaching of both spelling and vocabulary to help them develop into ‘word detectives’. Our children build up a bank of rich vocabulary in all lessons. We encourage our pupils to seek out common spelling patterns, make links, and find out meaning of words.