Intent
At Our Lady Star of the Sea, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. Our main aim is to ensure that every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We ensure that English is not only taught as a discrete subject but that it is embedded throughout the curriculum.
Through using high-quality texts, immersing children in vocabulary rich learning environments and ensuring curriculum expectations and the progression of skills are met, the children at Our Lady Star of the Sea will be exposed to a language rich, creative and a continuous English curriculum, which will not only enable them to become primary literate but will also develop a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful speaking and listening.
We want our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a neat, 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 pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process. Our aim is to develop children’s love of reading for pleasure and for our children to read a wide range of books by different authors and challenge themselves within their choices.
Implementation
Teachers plan and teach personalised English lessons which focus on the particular needs of each child. We recognise that each child has their own starting point upon entry to every year group and progress is measured in line with these starting points to ensure every child can celebrate success.
Children’s learning is focused around a high quality text in which the children fully immerse themselves in during the English lesson. Through engaging activities, the children will become familiar and confident with the chosen text and genre. Children will study the text type and build upon skills which they can apply when writing a specific genre. They are encouraged to explore a wide range of vocabulary and language which they can apply to their own work. Children then work on innovating – changing and adapting aspects of the text. Time will be spent planning writing in order for children to make decisions about the most effective choice of vocabulary or grammatical device to use in their writing. Time will be given at the end of each writing session for the teacher to provide feedback for the children to help them improve their writing in the following session. Finally, children will then have the opportunity to write which will be marked and assessed in order to give the children opportunities to adapt and improve their work where necessary.
Impact
- Pupils enjoy writing and use the features of different genres and styles. They can write for different purposes and audiences.
- Skills progression (spelling, grammar and punctuation) throughout the school is evident in children’s books.
- Pupils are adventurous with vocabulary choices and they continue to grow a varied vocabulary throughout their time at OLSOTS.
- Pupils will make good progress from their own personal starting points.
- By the end of Year 6, children will be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style to a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
Please find below our progression and planning documents for Writing.
