Intent

Writing

A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. The writing programmes of study are constructed into two major themes: composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing) and transcription (spelling and handwriting). Our broad and balanced curriculum provides our children with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to develop into well rounded, informed individuals. High quality text form the core of our English curriculum providing our children with opportunities to read and write across a range of contexts and for different purposes and in response to a variety of exciting first hand experiences.

Reading

Reading is a fundamental skill, enabling children to access not just their curriculum subjects, but allowing them to comprehend the world around them. We have placed reading at the heart of our curriculum. A positive attitude and genuine love of literature can often be hard to instil so we look for every opportunity to support children in developing their literary horizons.

Implement

Writing

In Years 1-6, each half term consists of at least one narrative, non-narrative and if possible a poetry unit. Narrative units tend to last longer than non-narrative and poetry units but will differ in length depending on the content, final written outcome and length of the term. We use our own bespoke curriculum, based on the National Curriculum, that is broken down into small steps in order for children to gain the knowledge they need to write well for different purposes.  A high quality text is also linked to writing so that children have exposure to great literature.  . They are exposed to a wide range of adventurous vocabulary which in turn they then incorporated in their writing.  Within each stage there are specific features that are taught, to develop a steady progression through the curriculum as well as review and consolidate skills from before. Children write with a purpose and audience in mind in order to focus their choice of vocabulary and sentence structure.

The English National Curriculum has an overview of the grammatical terms that needs to be introduced per year. We use the correct terminology as children need to become very familiar with it. New content in grammar is taught explicitly and then regularly referred to in normal teaching throughout the year. 

Spelling is based on the National Curriculum respective year group levels. For each week's spelling list, a lesson in school focusing on the spelling ‘rule’ (i.e. adding –s or –es on plurals), coupled with an online platform allowing children to embed their newly-learned skills by practising and applying the rules. 

Good handwriting is an essential skill in the quest to spell and write fluently, confidently and competently. The style is taught as separate letters at first – not letter strings – and all the letters with their diagonal lead-in joins are taught to proficiency and automaticity before starting to join the letters into words.

Reading

We use the systematic Read Write Inc. program for our phonics teaching. Read Write Inc. starts within our Nursery when the children are ready, and continues throughout Reception classes and into Year 1.  Some children will continue to have some specific phonics teaching from Year 2 upwards. 

As part of Read Write Inc, phonic books are closely matched to children’s increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words and, as children re-read the stories, their fluency increases. Along with this, prompts for thinking out loud and discussion, children are helped to read with a storyteller’s voice. To help secure a successful transition into Year 2, Read Write Inc is used for the first half term instead of Whole Class Guided Reading. Once children’s knowledge is secure, class teaching moves towards a mix of small group and whole class guided reading.

Each class has at least four whole class guided reading sessions per week. The purpose of them is to improve vocabulary comprehension and application, explicitly teach reading strategies and widen background knowledge. Sessions are based on both the class novel and alternate texts. Subject specific strategies linked to content domains including retrieval, inference, prediction and summarisation are taught as both stand-alone lessons and in combination with each other.