English at Westhouses Primary School

Introduction:

At Westhouses Primary School all children will have experience in the following areas in English: speaking and listening, reading, writing, grammar spelling and punctuation, as well as handwriting. Children are encouraged to communicate their ideas through writing and speaking which includes: drama, performance, creative writing, poetry and prose. Children’s work is celebrated both in school through display and out of school on the school website, through publications and competitions.

Writing:

Intent: Our aim is for all our children to be independent, resilient and confident writers who enjoy the writing process. Our lessons are carefully developed around challenging, quality texts using The Literacy Tree Writing Roots scheme and adapted to use Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing techniques.  Vocabulary is developed through the whole curriculum and pupils are encouraged and shown how to effectively use interesting and adventurous language in their writing. Alongside The Writing Roots, we use CGP workbooks for Grammar in Years 2 - 6, in order to ensure consistency and progression in grammar skills. 

Implementation:  We use the book-based Writing Roots from Literacy Tree, centred around a wide range of high quality and significant children's literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident and informed writers. The scheme has sequenced lessons of between ten and twenty sessions in length. Teachers will tailor the sessions to ensure they meet the needs of the children. Where the scheme is adapted to allow additional sessions for extended pieces of writing, teachers use an agreed teaching sequence. All National Curriculum requirements of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literary language and composition are embedded leading towards a variety of purposeful and exciting shorter, longer and extended writing outcomes where the audience and purpose is clear. Teachers use the genre knowledge mats to support children with this. In EYFS we also use Drawing Club to develop children’s understanding of sentence building. The teaching of spelling, grammar and punctuation are embedded into the scheme, but additional explicit teaching is supported with the use of Classroom Secrets resources, CGP workbooks from Y3 and a bespoke spelling scheme which builds on from the Little Wandle graphemes and follows a similar sequence of learning (see Phonics on a Page). Opposite is the tiered grammar progression; teachers use this to identify the writing elements children need to develop next in their independent writing.

Impact: Assessment in writing is ongoing throughout every lesson. This allows teachers to adapt their planning in order to target pupils for support, as well as ensure that all children are challenged appropriately. Children are given regular opportunities to edit and improve their own writing. Independent writing is moderated regularly as a staff.  

Handwriting:

The children need to learn the correct way to form letters so that they can go on to join up their letters as they get older. We use the Nelson Scheme for handwriting throughout school. Handwriting books are used daily at the beginning of the day. Effective activities for strengthening hand muscles used in school include dough disco, cutting and sticking activities, and using tweezers and clothes pegs. In Reception, we also use Squiggle While you Wiggle to reinforce letter formation. Opportunities for celebrating handwriting are encouraged to further engage and motivate pupils to be proud of their presentation.

Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation:

Grammar, Spelling and punctuation are taught through The Literacy Tree and reinforced more explicitly through the CGP workbooks where they revisit a concept throughout the week in a grammar starter. The week's focus will also be explored through other writing and reading as appropriate. Spelling is also taught through our daily phonics programme in EYFS and KS1 and our bespoke scheme in KS2 which closely mirrors the structure of phonics sessions and builds on the graphemes taught in the phonics programme. Phonics and spelling rules are taught, and consolidated during class sessions. Pupils are encouraged to learn spellings at home and spelling lists are sent out each week. Assessment is through termly NFER assessment test to track progress, teacher assessment and through our school tracking system.

TALKING AND ORACY

Children are encouraged to work with children of similar and different levels. This allows them to take a full part in all lessons. They work in pairs so that they:

• answer every question
• practise every activity with their partner
• take turns in reading texts which are challenging and thought provoking
• have the chance to develop skills with different pupils to develop communication skills
•  

Assessment:

We assess reading and Grammar using NFER tests and for Years 2 & 6, past SATs papers. We assess on entry into the new year group, mid-year and end of year for progress. Interventions are also used to support pupils to fulfil their potential and accelerate progress. Reading levels are assessed termly and we use benchmarking schemes analyse their progress in lexile levels and to ensure the children are reading suitable, challenging texts.

If you would like further information on how we teach specific areas of English, current texts and units being taught in class, please speak to your child’s class teacher.