Writing Curriculum Policy

Intent

Our writing curriculum has been specifically designed and planned to meet the context of our school which is underpinned by a Catholic education based upon the life and teaching of Jesus, in which Gospel values permeate all aspects of school life.  The writing curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced allowing pupils to further deepen their knowledge, skills and understanding in their writing journey. Co-operative learning is a key feature within teaching and we believe that working together helps children to deepen their understanding and also promotes tolerance and mutual respect, equipping our pupils with the necessary skills to live in modern Britain.

St Malachy’s RC Primary School puts writing at the heart of the curriculum. We believe that writing is an essential life skill. We want all children to be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing and reach their full potential.

Our aims are to:

• Guide and nurture each individual on their own personal journeys to becoming successful writers.
• Provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and enhance all pupils.
• We want all children to acquire a wide vocabulary and to be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time in primary school.
• We want all children to have a solid understanding of grammar and apply it effectively to their writing.
• We want them 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 children should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a legible, joined up, individual handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school.
• We want every child to have a good knowledge of phonics to enable children to becoming fluent writers.
• To plan a progressive curriculum to build upon previous teaching, with regular assessment to ensure each child’s needs are met to reach their full potential.

 Our writing curriculum is designed to be broad and balanced, providing all pupils with the opportunity to master their learning and deepen their knowledge. We believe it is vital for children to make sense and give purpose as to why we carry out writing based learning. We aim to deliver a curriculum which is accessible to all and what will maximise the outcomes for every child so that they know more, remember more and understand more.

We plan our writing sessions using the National Curriculum and Pathways to Write, this has helped to develop our progression grids.

 “Pathways to Write is a proven methodology built around units of work which develop vocabulary, reading and writing skills through the mastery approach. The units, for use with pupils from EYFS to Y6, provide clear detailed lesson plans and resources, linked to high-quality texts to ensure engaging and purposeful English lessons. Effective teaching strategies to challenge greater depth writers are included within each unit of work. Within each unit, there are new age-related skills for children to work on and master through a variety of activities and writing opportunities. By limiting the number of skills the units contain, children can really hone their writing techniques, providing excellent, focused assessment opportunities for teachers. At regular intervals, there are suggestions for extending greater depth writers within the context of the lesson. These are simple, manageable and effective with little additional planning required.”

 Implementation

At St Malachy’s RC Primary, writing is taught 5X per week across the whole school following our Pathways to Write lesson plans and mastery keys. Each class studies two different high-quality texts, lasting the half-term. One poetry book and one other book (mixed between fiction and non-fiction).

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. 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 genre studied during English lessons and apply this learning to a topic focus. Through the 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/opportunities:

• 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 practise
• Vocabulary practise
• Shared writing (modelled expectations)
• Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar lessons
• Independent writing
• Planning, drafting, editing, up-levelling and presenting
• Performing
• 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.

Handwriting: It is paramount that children are rigorously taught correct letter formation from the very beginning of their time in school. Handwriting is taught through our scheme ‘Kinetic Letters.’ This is a whole school approach.

Kinetic Letters is a unique handwriting programme that believes good, fast and fluent handwriting underpins success in every curriculum area. It is based on a physical programme where children learn handwriting and letter formation through movement and multisensory experiences, developing core body strength.

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.

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

Spellings: From Year 2, classes follow a progressive spelling scheme from ‘Rising Stars.’ Through exploring spelling patterns and rules, we aim to create confident and proficient spellers using a discrete teaching approach underpinned by phonics.

Writing is also taught through the framework of the 2014 National Curriculum. We implement this in the following ways:

• Writing Mastery Keys displayed in all classrooms and in the Children’s workbooks–Each year group will have personalised front covers for their children to refer to (knowledge organisers). These will also be displayed on working walls for children to refer to at all times.
• Working Walls- Working walls are used throughout the school to focus on key vocabulary used, key questions for the children to answer, key vocabulary, writing features and mastery keys.
• Provision in EYFS- Writing areas in provision areas both outside and inside the classroom.
• Independent learning- Range of writing tasks planned daily for children to complete, building on their prior knowledge.
• Resources- Well equipped book resources and resources needed for each of their writing sessions, including intervention sessions.
• Assessment- Writing assessments (every half term)
• Outdoor Learning- Writing areas provided in the outdoors as well as indoors.
• Approaches to teaching- We use a wide variety of teaching approaches to ensure our children make good progress. We ensure that a good balance of kagan work, independent enquiry and whole class learning is evident in our planning and teaching
• British Values and PSHE- Children will learn and revisit the importance of our writing and how this is a vital life skill. Children will use their writing skills to access lessons in cross-curricular areas.
• Cultural Capital- We plan half termly visit from One Education who work with the Literacy lead and ECT teachers to ensure high quality writing sessions. We plan visits from authors, poets, trips linking to our writing themes so that children have first-hand experience.

Impact

Outcomes in Literacy books and across the curriculum, evidence a broad and balanced writing curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.

We aim to:

• Use assessment as an integral part of the teaching and learning process and link it clearly to the children’s next steps.
• Formative assessment WILF’s (statements taken from progression map
• Constructive marking with ‘next steps’ and ‘modelling’ where appropriate.
• Teachers leave next steps in books when marking to ensure that children know exactly what they need to do next to make progress in their writing and children are encouraged to respond to this in green pen

The impact on our children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience. With the implementation of the writing sequence being established and taught across all key stages, including EYFS, children are becoming more confident writers and have the ability to plan, draft and edit their own work. By the end of key stage 2, children have developed a writer’s craft, they enjoy sustained writing and can manipulate language, grammar and punctuation to create effect. As all aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum, cross curricular writing standards have also improved and skills taught in the English lesson are transferred into other subjects; this shows consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific language, grammar and punctuation.

Children review their Age-Related Expectations at the end of each half term. Assessment data is gathered from their end of unit independent writing tasks. Children are encouraged to identify their own target areas, with the support from class teachers.

Through the implementation of our curriculum the planned impact is:

• Children will know more, remember more, build on prior learning, make links and understand more about reading.
• Children will retain their knowledge that is pertinent to writing
• Become fluent, confident and independent writers
• Read and respond to a wide range of different types of literature
• Understand and apply their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns and use this to decode words with accuracy
• Build their bank of sight words to enable fluent writing
• Develop a rich and varied vocabulary.

The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children at St Malachy’s RC aspire to be fluent, confident and able writers.

Reading Curriculum

Intent

Our Reading curriculum has been specifically designed and planned to meet the context of our school which is underpinned by a Catholic education based upon the life and teaching of Jesus, in which Gospel values permeate all aspects of school life.  The Reading curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced allowing pupils to further deepen their knowledge, skills and understanding in their reading journey. Co-operative learning is a key feature within teaching and we believe that working together helps children to deepen their understanding and also promotes tolerance and mutual respect, equipping our pupils with the necessary skills to live in modern Britain.

St Malachy’s RC Primary School puts reading at the heart of the curriculum. We believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. At the heart of our planning is our drive to foster a love of reading, both in school and at home, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise imaginative stories and thought provoking texts.

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher.

We aim to have pupils leave St Malachy’s RC as lifelong readers, who have an instilled love for reading in them. In order to do this, children are encouraged to read widely and are exposed to a variety of genres. Reading across all subjects within the curriculum will prepare pupils for life beyond the Primary Classroom, where they will be taking with them the skills required for in-depth reading and analysing.

Our Reading curriculum is designed to be broad and balanced, providing all pupils with the opportunity to master their learning and deepen their knowledge. We believe it is vital for children to make sense and give purpose as to why we carried out reading based learning. We aim to deliver a curriculum which is accessible to all and what will maximise the outcomes for every child so that they know more, remember more and understand more.

We plan Reading using the National Curriculum. We enhance the curriculum using the comprehension scheme, Read, Write, Inc, reading gems and RAMP reading. All of these scheme have helped to develop our progression grids. We then use our progression grids to develop our long- term planning. Then teachers use these long-term plans to plan units of work and deliver individual lessons.

Implementation

Early reading is prioritised in EYFS and KS1. It is underpinned by a coherent and systematic phonics scheme. Read, Write, Inc, which is taught daily. All teaching staff throughout school have received high quality training in the teaching of phonics and members of staff have the opportunity to share good practice amongst each other to ensure consistency and the same high standards are met across the key stages. Our Phonics leader continues to deliver high quality training to new staff and ECT’s throughout the year. We also have a CPD log in to access online training which TA staff carry out every week during their PPA time and teachers during their PPA time also.

For early reading and phonics, we carry out a baseline assessment as children enter EYFS and KS1. We continue to assess children’s phonics skills each half-term using phonics assessments in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 that follow a similar pattern to daily lessons: phoneme / grapheme awareness, segmenting and blending, reading and writing. We also consolidate these assessment using PM benchmarking assessment tasks every half term. From Year groups 2-6, GL reading assessments are also carried out. This gives us a clear understanding as to where are children are.

Group phonics sessions are taught daily from Nursery-Year 2, with those who are struggling to grasp key elements taught receiving additional phonics sessions. These are carried out as part of our early bird intervention sessions. These run Tuesday-Thursday’s every week. This is to ensure all pupils receive equal exposure to teaching material for their age group and are given the same opportunity to learn.

Children are split into Phonics groups (according to their ability) in all year groups. Year 1 and 2 are streamed across both year groups to ensure children are accessing learning based on their needs. The sessions are planned consistently using the five structure approach:

• Review
• Revisit
• Teach
• Practise
• Apply

Children have the opportunity during the practise and apply sessions to read a range of books with their new sounds in (2 days) and then move on to using their writing books to practise applying their new sounds within their writing.

At St Malachy’s RC, along with listening to readers and assessing their reading fluency, we will also teach different skills to enable children to understand, respond and analyse different texts.

As a school we use RAMP (Reading and Modelled Practice) system when planning and delivering our guided reading sessions. This system has the following features:

• Activating prior knowledge
• Predicting
• Clarifying
• Questioning
• Grammar
• Inference
• Summarising
•  

The main reason for this approach is to ensure continuity in the teaching of reading using a system that is known to all staff. The system runs from EYFS through to Year 6. This system is supported by our reading gems which is a ‘One Education’ strategy using the terms:

• Enjoy
• Decode
• Define
• Retrieve
• Summarise
• Infer
• Predict
• Relate
• Explore
• Compare

By the end of Year 6, the above skills will be taught in whole class reading lessons through different text types involving both fiction and non-fiction (see progression map for further breakdown).

Reading is also taught through the framework of the 2014 National Curriculum. We implement this in the following ways:

• Reading Gems displayed in every classroom –Each year group will have
• Working Walls- Working walls are used throughout the school to focus on key vocabulary used, key questions for the children to answer, book reviews, reading gems and stem questions.
• RAMP reading displays- These are displayed in all classroom. Planning and delivery of all sessions are planned around this format mentioned above. This is used from EYFS through to Year 6.
• Provision in EYFS- Reading areas in provision areas both outside and inside the classroom.
• Independent learning- Range of books to plan from oxford reading tree (from pink book band through to black book bands).
• Resources- Well equipped library for the whole school to use, reading corners and areas in all classrooms and well displayed classrooms for children to use daily.
• Assessment- GL assessments (termly), PM bench marking (termly), RWI phonics assessments for KS (termly) 1 and guided reading independent question tasks carried out weekly.
• Outdoor Learning- Reading areas provided in the outdoors as well as indoors.
• Approaches to teaching- We use a wide variety of teaching approaches to ensure our children make good progress. We ensure that a good balance of kagan work, independent enquiry and whole class learning is evident in our planning and teaching
• British Values and PSHE- Children will learn and revisit the importance of our reading and how this is a vital life skill. Children will use their reading skills to access lessons in cross-curricular areas.
• Cultural Capital- We plan termly visits, activities and experiences. These range from visits from authors, poets, reading companies, world book day and trips out to the local libraries.

Impact

Outcomes in Guided Reading books and across the curriculum, evidence a broad and balanced reading curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge. We have also received our ‘Gold Reading Award.’

Children review their Age-Related Expectations at the end of each half term. Assessment data is gathered from phonic assessments, PM Benchmarking, independent question activities and GL assessments. Children and are actively encouraged to identify their own target areas, with the support from class teachers. Through the implementation of our curriculum the planned impact is:

• Children will know more, remember more, build on prior learning, make links and understand more about reading.
• Children will retain their knowledge that is pertinent to reading
• Become fluent, confident and independent readers
• Read for pleasure and enjoyment as well as information
• Read and respond to a wide range of different types of literature
• Understand the layout and how to use different text types
• Understand and apply their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns and use this to decode words with accuracy
• Build their bank of sight words to enable fluent reading
• Develop a rich and varied vocabulary
• Understand, respond and appreciate literature drawn from a range of cultures and literary heritage
• Have enough experience with books to be able to draw comparisons, find similarities, differences and discuss enjoyment.

The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children at St Malachy’s RC aspire to be fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning and all areas of the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.

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