Intent
Our English curriculum has been developed to recognise the importance of English in every aspect of daily life and to develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion.
They learn how to attend to their spellings, handwriting, grammar, and sentence construction. This helps them write happily and fluently.
Children explore different genres and their features. Whilst doing this, they consider who they would like to write their pieces for and what they would like to write about most. Children are taught how to use the same features and expert techniques they identified from model texts in their own compositions.
Implementation
We know the importance of children needing to build fluency in using and applying the fundamentals of writing. Across school, children receive discrete handwriting, spelling, grammar and punctuation teaching and have opportunities to apply these skills through regular dictation. This is taught in accordance with the statutory requirements of the English National Curriculum and following the Essential Letters and Sounds and Spelling Shed schemes.
To ensure that children develop their understanding of having a purpose for writing, we have developed a writing long term plan. This includes carefully chosen high-quality texts that are age-appropriately challenging, diverse and, where appropriate, link to children’s current learning in other subject areas. Key genres have then been identified for each text and children are expected to produce a final piece of writing for each of the genres. To support the teaching and learning of these genres, teachers plan using the following sequence:
Immersion – Introduction and building familiarity with the text.
WAGOLL analysis – Children are introduced to the text type and genre and will unpick features with the guidance of the teacher. This phase will help children to understand their success criteria for their end piece writing
Skills development – Children will have opportunities to practise key writing skills that will support them to meet the success criteria for their end piece of writing. Teachers will provide modelled, shared and independent writing opportunities.