English

Intent

At Westfield, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. We aim to inspire children in their writing by providing opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills both in English lessons and across the wider curriculum. We want all children to be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing and reach their full potential as writers.

We aim  to:

• Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers.
• Provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and inspire all pupils.
• Help children become confident in the skills of speaking and listening and to use them to inspire their writing
• Ensure children have a good knowledge of phonics as a springboard to becoming fluent writers.
• Ensure children acquire a wide vocabulary and are able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn.
• Ensure children have a good knowledge of grammar and punctuation, and apply it effectively to their writing.
• Encourage them to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• Create writers who can re-read, edit and revise their own writing
• Encourage them to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, cursive, individual handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school.
• Provide a progressive curriculum to build upon previous teaching, with regular assessment to ensure each child’s needs are met to reach their full potential.

Implementation

With these aims in mind, English and separate reading sessions are timetabled daily across all year groups. We passionately believe that reading and writing are inextricably linked therefore studying the text in both reading and writing sessions encourages children to make links and become empathetic and ambitious writers.

Genres and writing purposes

Throughout the school, writing is taught through the use of rich texts, which give the opportunity for children to read as writers, exposing them to inference, high-level vocabulary, a range of punctuation and grammatical structures. Each text is purposefully selected in order to inspire high quality writing from each child. 

Long, medium and short term planning and the use of progression maps ensure that a variety of genres are progressively taught and built upon both throughout the year and throughout the school. These fall under four main writing purposes:

• Writing to entertain (KS1 and KS2)
• Writing to inform  (KS1 and KS2)
• Writing to persuade (KS2 only)
• Writing to discuss  (Upper KS2 only)

Each year group is teaching the explicit grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives required for that age group. These are taught both as stand-alone lessons and through the process of writing, with grammar objectives linked to the writing purpose. 

Writing is also a key focus in the wider curriculum, especially in ‘Topic’ lessons. Children are given the opportunity to transfer and build upon their knowledge of a writing purpose studied during English lessons and apply this learning to a topic focus. 

Through the rich texts-based writing process, children will acquire and learn the skills to plan, draft and refine their written work over time and are encouraged to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing.

Within each unit of work, sequenced lessons ensure that prior learning is checked and built upon and that National Curriculum objectives are taught through a combination of approaches and activities, such as:

• Opportunities to participate in drama & spoken language activities
• Exploring the features of different text types and modelled examples (E.g. Spotting features in a WAGOLL – What a good one looks like)
• Handwriting practice
• Vocabulary based activities (e.g. dictionary work, matching words to definitions)
• Shared writing (using the model, share, try, apply approach)
• Discrete Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar lessons
• Independent writing
• Planning, drafting, editing, up-levelling and presenting
• Reading and performing
• Debating

Handwriting

It is paramount that children are rigorously taught correct letter formation from the very beginning of their time in school. During the foundation stage at Westfield, the children are taught to sit properly in order to have the correct posture for writing, hold a pencil in the correct position and develop a legible handwriting style. In KS1, we teach handwriting by developing both a child’s Key Strengths (Gross & Fine Motor Skills) and Key Abilities (Knowledge). It is a systematic, differentiated and progressive approach which supports children of all ability levels.

Teachers model the school’s handwriting style when marking children’s work, writing on the board and on displays around the school.

Spelling

In reception and Key Stage 1, daily Read, Write Inc. phonics sessions support the development of early reading skills, leading into writing. They learn to form each letter, spell correctly, and compose their ideas step-by-step. In KS2, spelling is taught through Read, Write Inc. spelling, with handwriting taught alongside.

From Year 2, children follow the Read, Write Inc. spelling scheme. Through exploring spelling patterns and rules, we aim to create confident and proficient spellers using a discrete teaching approach underpinned by phonics.

Children are also taught to:

• Spell accurately and identify reasons for mis-spellings
• Proof-read their spellings
• Recognise and use word origins, families and roots to build their skills
• Use dictionaries and thesauruses.

Assessment and feedback

Assessment is used as an integral part of the teaching and learning process and links directly to the children’s next steps.

• Formative assessment grids (using KPIs)
• Targets given to children where appropriate
• Constructive feedback with ‘next steps’ and ‘modelling’ where appropriate, both through verbal feedback, teacher and peer marking. 
• Marking codes are used to facilitate effective editing (CUPS) and revising (ARMS):

• Capitalisation
• Usage (especially subject-verb agreement)
• Punctuation
• Spelling

• Adding (extra words or phrases)
• Removing (unnecessary words or phrases)
• Moving (adverbials or adverbs within a sentence)
• Substituting (words for better ones)

Impact

Our children 

• Enjoy writing and are exposed to a broad range of texts and writing purposes.
• Become confident writers and have the ability to plan, draft and edit their own work.
• Have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience.
• Are able to use a good range of vocabulary that they are able to apply in their writing.
• Have a solid foundation in spelling and have a range of strategies to support the continual learning of their spelling.
• Are able to identify, use and apply grammatical features in their writing effectively across the curriculum.
• Have, by the end of key stage 2, developed a writer’s craft, they enjoy sustained writing and can manipulate language, grammar and punctuation to create effect. 
• Are able to develop a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific language, grammar and punctuation transferred into writing other subjects