Corby Old Village Primary Schools latest newsletter

Writing

At Corby Old Village Primary School the children’s literacy skills are developed through an integrated programme of speaking and listening, reading and writing, and then extended throughout all other curriculum areas.

We aim for all pupils to:

  • develop effective speaking, listening, group interaction and drama skills
  • read and write with confidence, fluency and understanding, using a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct
  • understand phonics and regular spelling patterns, using them to read and spell accurately
  • be word aware and become confident in both written and spoken vocabulary
  • have an interest in words and their meanings; developing a growing vocabulary
  • become lifelong readers with an interest in books, who read for enjoyment, evaluating and justifying their preferences
  • understand a range of text types and genres and be able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation
  • develop the powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness
  • have fluent and legible handwriting
  • understand the structure and styles of a range of fiction and non-fiction texts
  • become independent in the process of planning, drafting, editing and improving their own writing

 

Organisation of Learning and Teaching

The English Curriculum is delivered mainly using The Literacy Tree planning sequences.  These schemes ensure children’s engagement with a culturally rich and diverse range of books and reading material whilst building pleasure and interest.

Literacy skills are practised and applied in context through work across the whole curriculum.  Basic skills sessions (handwriting, grammar and punctuation, phonics/spelling and reading comprehension) take place daily.

Inclusion 

All children are provided with equal access to our English curriculum. We provide suitable learning opportunities regardless of gender, ethnicity or home background. We expect the vast majority of our pupils to achieve age related expectations in English. For those pupils who may find handwriting challenging for a variety of reasons our approaches to the teaching and learning of English will be adapted and differentiated to ensure that all pupils make progress. Provision is made for children who require extra support through targeted teaching; intervention programmes (e.g. Hornet, Nessy), and differentiated class teaching.

Writing

We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. Attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. Our approach to teaching writing covers the ‘transcription’ and ‘composition’ requirements of The National Curriculum (2014)

These strategies are embedded into The Literacy Tree Planning Documents, whereby a range of different context writing tasks are based on a text. This allows children to have the opportunity to ‘explore high quality texts in depth, enhancing reading comprehension and providing meaningful contexts and purposes for writing’. We also recognise the importance in developing spoken language, therefore opportunities to develop spoken language skills are planned for within English lessons and across the wider curriculum. These include include: talk partners, storytelling, roleplay and debating within lesson.  The teaching of this programme is flexible and class teachers apply their own creativity to cover the objectives stated in the National Curriculum.

Teachers model writing composition skills and the use of phonics and spelling strategies in shared writing sessions. Children have opportunities to write at length in regular extended independent writing sessions; applying their taught skills to a piece of writing.

Discrete handwriting sessions are taught daily in EYFS/KS1, to help children develop fluent, clear and legible joined up writing.

Writing Progression Map

English Progression Map

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Corby Old Village Primary Schools latest newsletter