ENGLISH- Writing
INTENT
At Webheath Academy Primary School, we believe that literacy and communication is the foundation of all learning and integral to all aspects of life. Through our English curriculum, we provide children with the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge that will empower them to communicate effectively, imaginatively and creatively through spoken and written word across the whole curriculum and equip them with the skills to become lifelong learners.
Our aim is to ensure every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We want pupils to acquire a rich vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time at Webheath. We want them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We strive for our pupils to control their speaking and writing consciously and to use correct Standard English, knowing when and how to experiment with authorial tone and structure. We encourage all pupils to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a good, joined, handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process. We adopt a ‘limitless learning’ approach as we believe that no child should have a ceiling on what they can achieve and we are inclusive to all pupils and make no assumptions in their abilities to make progress.
IMPLEMENTATION
These aims are embedded across our Literacy lessons and the wider curriculum. We have a rigorous and well organised English curriculum that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. At Webheath, we believe that writing is strengthened by instilling a love for reading within our pupils. We value the importance of reading to supplement writing, providing a purpose and a context to writing. We believe that pupils who are provided a reason for writing demonstrate flair and effective writing composition, leading to high quality outcomes. Our English curriculum is derived around a sequence of high quality age-appropriate texts. We use each book to create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills; develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identify the purpose and audience; plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.
We teach English as whole class lessons, so that all children have access to the age-related skills and knowledge contained in the National Curriculum. Core English lessons are supplemented with spelling, punctuation and grammar lessons which correspond to the genre being written to support the writing process. (The Letters and Sounds program, followed by No Nonsense Spelling scheme are followed to sequence the teaching of spelling rules and patterns.) Children are then supported in how to apply spelling, grammar and punctuation within a context through high quality modelling before moving on to plan, write and re-draft their piece appropriate to the identified audience and purpose. Each year group have a yearly overview of the writing skills, both narrative and non-fiction, that they will teach. These have been planned to ensure correct coverage and key genres are revised and built on from year to year.
We endeavour to ensure we provide our pupils with a 'language rich' environment. We do this by ensuring children have access and use a wide range of quality text, planning and celebrating new and ambitious vocabulary across the whole curriculum to ensure children acquire an understanding of tricky language, and use of displays and working walls, These working walls are regularly updated to ensure the learning journey is documented. Class teachers ensure that the writing process is clearly evident on working walls, with modelled examples being available to all pupils as the sequence of lessons develops and key terminology and vocabulary remain consistent for all pupils to access everyday.
In this writing process, children receive frequent feedback from teachers and peers and teachers endeavour to provide ‘in the moment’ feedback in lessons to maximise impact on the child’s written outcomes. Teachers follow the school’s Marking Policy, use their professional judgement when to conduct a summative assessment and report on the assessment system (Arbor) on the pupils standards determined against year specific Key Performance Indicators.
Within lessons, teachers and teaching assistants target support in closing the gap where necessary for pupils to achieve at an age-related level wherever possible and to challenge the more able. This may involve a greater level of scaffolding and access to additional support materials such as Writers Toolkits, Word Banks or a greater level of modelling. More able are given opportunities to extend their writing in a variety of ways, including through showing greater control in their writing, a deeper understanding of the impact that their writing has on the reader and by using a higher level of vocabulary and grammar features.
IMPACT
The effectiveness and impact of our English Writing, Grammar and Spelling curriculum is measured in a variety of different ways. We use National and summative testing to assess pupils' outcomes for Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling as part of the Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs for Year 6 pupils) and timely summative writing assessments across school which enables pupils' progress and attainment to be evaluated and inform teachers of pupils' next steps and successes which are shared with the pupils. Additionally, pupils complete writing assessments which are comparatively judged using the ‘No More Marking’ process, this provides us with a nationally standardised score, a writing age, and a comparison with other schools performances. We also ensure we moderate written pieces within our own school and externally with other primary schools. The impact of the curriculum can be seen through pupils' national assessment results.
Through lesson and pupils' book monitoring, it is evident that pupils are being well supported to acquire the necessary skills and subject knowledge in order to become established and confident writers and work monitored in books demonstrates that the curriculum is taught at an age-appropriate standard across each year group, with additional opportunities planned to close the gap and for pupils to demonstrate their ability to work at a higher standard. Lesson observations demonstrate that learning is being broken down into smaller steps and modelling supports pupils in the writing process - ensuring that the subject as a whole is regularly being reviewed to ensure learning is being embedded into pupils' long term memory.
Pupils’ voice and talking to the children about their learning measures the impact of our English curriculum. Pupils’ voice at Webheath reflects that children are enjoying writing, feel supported and can talk about the subject and curriculum opportunities.
Spelling
At Webheath the 'Letters and Sounds Programme' is followed to introduce and teach phonics in EYFS and Year 1. This resource (published by the DFE) aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. At the end of Year 1, children will undertake a Phonics Screening Check to asses progress. For those pupils who do not meet the expected standard will continue to follow this programme into Year 2.
The No Nonsense Spelling programme is introduced in Year 2 and followed through to Year 6; this supports the statutory guidance found in the National Curriculum. The programme provides structure which allows children to revisit and review, learn new strategies and apply. A variety of strategies are suggested so that children with different learning styles can find out what works well for them.
Supporting Documents
Key Stage 1 Common Exception Words
Reading
As stated above, reading is an integral part to all of our learning and is a foundation to pupils success. We use high quality literature and text to engage our pupils and provide them with a good model for writing. More details can be found about our reading design and approach on the Curriculum Reading page.
Cultural Capital
We value embedding cultural capital opportunities into our English curriculum to help provide pupils with the skills and foundations to become successful citizens in their future society and career. At Webheath, we endeavour to celebrate a rich and wide range of text, and learn and recite poetry. All our teaching plans for a wealth of speaking and listening opportunities where children have the opportunity to debate, share opinions, consider alternative perspectives and our children will learn scripts and take on roles for performances. We reach out to our local community such as our library and participate in their Summer Reading Challenge and the Cinema for the 'Film festival'; in addition we also actively seek other writing and reading competitions and opportunities e.g World Book Day and Book share.