Reading is breathing in, writing is breathing out.

Pam Allyn

Writing Lead in school – Mrs J Noy

Curriculum Intent

At Toner Avenue Primary School we recognise the importance of studying English. We want the children at our school to be confident, successful readers, speakers and writers. We want the children to leave us with solid literacy skills which will positively impact the rest of their lives.

We aim to develop pupils’ skills in spoken language, reading and writing. The children will be given opportunities to consolidate and reinforce their English skills across the curriculum.  

We intend for the pupils to be able to:

  • Be exposed to a range of high quality texts which develop within children an interest in books, reading for pleasure or for information
  • Read with confidence, fluency and understanding
  • Have an interest in words and their meanings – increasing and developing their vocabulary
  • Have the skills to write clearly and coherently, adapting their writing style for a range of genres, purposes and audiences.
  •  Use their speaking and listening skills to elaborate and clearly explain their ideas

Curriculum Implementation

From Nursery to Year 6, the children are taught English in their classes. Through differentiation and the support from the class teacher and teaching assistants, all children will receive good teaching and support to sure that they reach their full potential. Years 1 to 6 use high quality texts in addition to visual stimuli in order to teach the National Curriculum objectives. Teachers tailor this planning to the needs of their classes using ongoing assessment and summative termly writing assessments.

Children with Action Plans  receive more support tailored to their individual needs. This might include word banks, sentence scaffolds in addition to pictorial reminders. 

The Marking and Feedback policy is followed; ‘live’ marking is used where possible to ensure the children receive timely feedback to make improvements and additions to their work within the lesson. We provide opportunities for children to read and write throughout the whole curriculum, opportunities for extended writing are explicitly linked throughout our curriculum overviews.

Writing and Grammar

At Toner Avenue School, we teach writing from high quality texts. Objectives for reading, writing and grammar are covered and have purpose when writing both shorter and longer pieces. Children are given real reasons to write including explanation, persuasion, informing, instructing and entertaining allowing opportunities to vary tone and level of formality is appropriate. 

We are always seeking opportunities to promote writing for a purpose and an audience through our curriculum. For example, some of our children’s work was sent through X, to the author of the text we were studying and the children were delighted when the author replied. Some children also created a ‘Guide to Minecraft’ which they created a video and narrated for, it was then uploaded to YouTube and our School Website. In another year group, children wrote a letter to the Prime Minister regarding plastic pollution in the oceans. Our themed curriculum provides more opportunities for writing for a purpose outside of the English lessons.

Oracy is incorporated within our teaching of writing. It is important for the children to learn how to say their sentences before writing. Talk partners, hot seating, conscious alley and other drama activities are used to ensure children are excited about lessons but also practise using full sentences and topic specific vocab.   It is also important for children to be able to read their work out loud for different purposes, to either present to an audience or to read it aloud critically to be able to edit and improve it.

We use shared writing and guided writing at Toner Avenue to develop the children’s writing skills. When sharing writing, the teacher models writing and explains their thought processes clearly to teach children to ‘think like a writer’. The children contribute where appropriate. In guided writing, the children become the writer and the teacher supports. This is to ensure the children have the opportunity to write with the class teacher helping them to develop and extend their writing skills based on their needs. We also ensure that the teaching of grammar should feed into the writing or reading activity the children are undertaking. 

Children are given many opportunities to edit and improve their writing following the same routine regardless of text type.

Spelling

All staff follow the expectations of spellings, set out in the National Curriculum Framework 2014.

In Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Y3, spelling is taught and monitored through discrete phonics sessions. In the early stages of writing, the children are encouraged to make phonetically plausible attempts at spellings. The younger children are explicitly taught how to spell words with spelling patterns they’ve not covered yet (e.g. you) and the Year 1 and 2 common exception words. The Sounds-Write training has ensured consistency when addressing errors in spelling through error correction techniques. It is expected that they will apply these within their writing.

In Key Stage 2, new spelling sound correspondences and patterns are introduced and taught in discrete Sounds Write spelling lessons and consolidated in the main English lessons, where possible.

Handwriting

At Toner Avenue, we expect high standards of handwriting across all subjects.

Handwriting is taught in short bursts, in daily discrete sessions, using the Penpals scheme. This is completed in the child’s English book. Handwriting is modelled regularly by the teachers within their lessons. Short daily practise is expected in English books.

EYFS support the early development of handwriting by allowing children to practise their manipulative skills and teach children how to hold a pencil correctly. This is to ensure that children develop fine motor skills for writing. This continues into KS1 where necessary.

Staff are expected to model high standards of handwriting, through their marking and guided writing to ensure the children have a model to aspire to. Staff must always correct incorrect formation and encourage children to redo the letter correctly.

Statutory Requirements

This policy adheres to the National Curriculum in England: Framework Document (2014) for English. It also adheres to the Communication, Language and Literacy section of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2014).

Curriculum Impact

The impact will be shown in; improvement in data across school, improvement in data for ELGs, phonics screening check, KS1 and KS2 assessments.