All of our writing centres around high-quality texts; without rich examples to inspire pupils, we cannot expect high standards in return. Teachers have carefully designed their long-term plans around a variety of core texts that illustrate the required writing, spelling and grammar outcomes across fiction and non-fiction for each term. These long-term maps are expanded into medium-term plans and detailed weekly lesson slides that guide day-to-day teaching.

At the start of each unit, children explore high-quality model texts to identify the key skills they will be learning. They then complete focused lessons to master these skills before carefully planning, drafting and editing their own work. Finally, children publish their writing, taking pride and full ownership of their finished piece.

 As it is a core subject, English is taught daily in each class. Lessons are planned so that they build on each other in   small, sequential steps, ensuring that children fully understand and develop the skills they are being taught.

 We use a ‘book based’ approach to teaching English. We have carefully chosen a range of high quality and engaging   texts for each year group and these are used as a basis for teaching the skills outlined in the National Curriculum.   Teachers also use these books to give the children plenty of opportunities to write stories, reviews, reports, letters,   diary entries and many other writing genres.

 A variety of models for teaching writing are used; teacher modeling, shared writing, supported composition, guided   and independent writing. At the immersion stage of learning a key text, the children are taught a particular skill.   These skills are taken from our progression of skills documents. During this stage of learning, children are given the   opportunity to apply their newly taught skill in a short piece of writing (short burst writing). These activities range in   purpose and length, depending on the year group and context of the short write. Finally, children combine and apply   the skills they have learned in an extended piece of writing by planning, drafting, editing and publishing. 

Grammar and Punctuation skills are taught in English lessons and follow the objectives in the National Curriculum.

Children will learn about word types, tenses, punctuation and sentence construction. When pupils are familiar with a concept, they are given opportunities to apply this in short burst writes.

Spelling in Reception and Year 1 is taught mostly through their daily phonics lessons, but also insome English lessons. They will also begin learning how to spell some Common Exception Words. (These are High Frequency Words which cannot be spelt  using phonics).

This year, we are prioritising spelling from Year 2 to Year 6 to ensure all pupils master common exception words and age-expected spelling rules. We deliver spelling through the SLN scheme, which uses an inquiry-based approach to ensure our pupils leave Year 6 as confident, capable spellers.

In addition to daily English lessons, handwriting is taught at least weekly across all year groups using the Unlocking Letters and Sounds scheme to ensure fluency and legibility during sustained writing. Pupils in Reception through to Year 2 build strong foundations in early reading and phonics via this same programme, continuing their progress through Accelerated Reader.