Writing

At St Mary’s we have designed our own English curriculum that is cross-curricular linked with Science, RE, History and Geography.  This encourages children to write for purpose, through writing opportunities both in English lessons and in other curriculum areas.

Whole School Writing Overview 2023-24

Our English curriculum places a strong emphasis on writing to ensure all children develop the necessary skills to become fluent, imaginative, independent writers. Within the daily English lessons, teachers ensure that they teach a range of writing skills including spelling, grammar, punctuation and the key features of different types of writing.

To develop English the following teaching schemes and approaches are used for lesson planning:

  • The Power of Reading – CLPE
  • Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Phonics
  • No Nonsense Spelling
  • Letter Join Handwriting
  • Hamilton Trust

Nursery and Reception

Communication, Language and Literacy is taught and embedded into every aspect of EYFS.

It is important to note that, in the Early Years, it is imperative that we reflect the essential links between the four aspects of literacy development. These are: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Early Years environments, both indoors and out, should display many links to literacy, reflecting its status and importance across all areas of learning.

Adults in our Nursery and Reception classes plan carefully to ensure that their environments are literacy-rich and include print in the form of letters and words.

Children in our Nursery and Reception classes develop their handwriting skills through an interlinking curriculum centred around a combination of adult guided activities and structured play. Getting the balance right between child-initiated play, which is controlled, and adult led activities is very important to us.

There are a variety of books in the literacy areas and early writing resources available for the children to access independently. Phonics is also taught daily to develop the children’s early reading and writing skills.

Key Stage 1 and 2

Daily direct teaching

English is taught every day in our mixed age classes.

The lessons are differentiated to meet the needs of all pupils .

Our new curriculum is focused around different genres of writing and a selection of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts to support the learning.

When teaching writing, teachers model skills, processes and procedures for writing. Daily lessons incorporate a range of important writing skills such as planning, editing and proofreading, spelling, sentence structure and developing ideas.

Grammar

Grammar objectives for each year group are taught through the high-quality texts in our English lessons. This teaching is reinforced through our writing non-negotiables that are used across all school lessons.

Spelling

Spelling sessions takes place alongside phonics sessions and in Year 2 upwards, two /three times a week.

By the end of year 1, pupils should be able to spell a large number of different words containing the GPCs that they have learnt in their phonics lessons.

From Year 1 upwards, lessons are focused on specific spelling rules.

We use the ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ Scheme. Lessons from this scheme follow a simple model, practise, apply structure building on the structure of how spellings are taught in phonics lessons.

Weekly spellings go home and a spelling test takes place at the end of the week.

Handwriting

Handwriting session takes place daily in KS1 and two /three times a week in KS2.

We use the letter join scheme which delivers a multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning handwriting: Letter Join

There is also a ‘Spelling-Handwriting’ lesson once a week to practise the week’s spellings in children’s handwriting book.

Extended writing

Through our extended writing session children are given the opportunity to produce longer pieces of writing based around a topic or theme they have been studying. The aim during these sessions is for children to incorporate all skills learnt including comprehension of topic, spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting. To produce an extended piece of detailed writing based on the core text studied. Children work towards an extended writing piece around every 2 weeks, depending on the unit of work.

Grammar and Punctuation Progression map