Writing
Intent
Writing is an integral part of our curriculum. All children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum. We incorporate the Talk for Writing model where children are taught writing skills through studying a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, including the use of teacher-produced models for writing. Children are encouraged to learn texts by heart, before innovating and applying more independent changes to the model so that they are able to write freely with confidence. This helps them to understand the key language and layout features of different text types.
It is our intention that pupils develop a clear understanding of the writing process in order to establish themselves as an author in their own right. Through our book-led curriculum, we foster pupils' interest in writing and offer a reason and context for writing which enables the children to write for purpose and audience. Pupils are taken on a writing journey which builds their knowledge of writing for context and purpose, allows the opportunities for the children to explore a variety of genres, planning, drafting and re-drafting their writing. In order to establish this, pupils will develop their knowledge of genre features, narrative blueprints, audience, language and effective composition. It is our intention to broaden our pupils' exposure to high level vocabulary to allow pupils to apply their understanding of vocabulary and grammatical features within and across the English curriculum.
Grammar - The sentence toolkit
The abstract nature of grammar makes it difficult for young pupils to understand. The sentence toolkit provides something concrete for teachers to use in the classroom to bring grammar alive and develop pupils’ awareness and understanding of key grammatical concepts. Grammar enables us to make sense of language and we require a good understanding of grammar in order to use both written and spoken language effectively.
The sentence toolkit helps teachers to help children to move beyond the awareness of features towards a genuine understanding of how they can be used to communicate effectively in writing.
