Writing & Grammar
In line with the National Curriculum English Programme of Study, we teach children to understand a range of genres, building on children’s understanding year after year, ensuring continuity and progression in the teaching of English. Children are taught how to effectively plan and monitor their own writing through various strategies depending on the current skills of the writer, children will learn how, when, and why to use each strategy. We teach children to write following a three phase approach: Familiarise, Innovate and Create. Familiarising allows the children to engage with their genre and discover facts about the topic or structure. Innovating is where the children begin to rehearse ideas through short, focussed activities: experiment, choose, practise and play with the language features and begin to plan. Finally, children begin to draft, edit review and create their genre outcome. Purpose and audience are central to our writing and an integral part of the writing planning process.
We use four main types of writing purposes across KS1 and KS2: writing to entertain; to inform; to persuade; and to discuss.
We want to provide our children with a clear purpose and audience for writing. Every unit of writing throughout school is matched to a quality-text or film to provide a relevant stimulus for reading and writing. We encourage, where possible for a thematic approach, linking to the topic. This means that the children are equipped with the skills and tools needed to write fluently for a range of meaningful purposes throughout the years. The approach throughout a unit allows the children to become familiar with a text type, capturing ideas for their own writing followed by scaffolding writing experiences, resulting in independent writing outcomes.
Year group specific grammar, as identified in the National Curriculum, is taught within our writing and topic lessons and referenced as and when needed throughout our wider curriculum. Sentence level and grammar activities take place within our writing lessons and are regularly revisited.