An Oxton St Saviour's Writer

"If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write." 

Martin Luther

Intent

Writing is an essential life skill that provides access to the experiences of people from different cultures and times. Children must develop the ability to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Writing enables children to express themselves creativity and imaginatively. At Oxton St Saviour's, children will use their knowledge, skills and understanding in speaking and writing across a range of different situations. We understand the natural relationship between reading and writing, and we strive to provide children at St Saviour’s with rich, high quality texts to support their development as writers. 

Our aims are:

• To develop children’s ability to speak with confidence, clarity, fluency and in an appropriate form and listen to what others have to say.
• To enable the children to use talk for a range of purposes, including talk for learning and talk for expressing their feelings about matters which concern them.
• To develop children’s ability to speak in a variety of situations; to increase their understanding of the power of the spoken word.
• To develop children’s capacity to listen with attention and understanding so that they can remember the main points.
• To teach children to use language in imaginative ways and express their ideas and feelings when working in role and in drama activities.
• To help children enjoy writing and recognise its value.
• To enable children to write with accuracy and meaning in narrative and non-fiction.
• To increase children’s ability to use planning, drafting and redrafting to improve their work.
• To develop the children’s use of vocabulary for a range of purposes.

Implementation

At Oxton St Saviour’s we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in English in order to meet the needs of all our pupils. Throughout the school, text based learning is employed to develop reading and writing skills and these are constantly applied through meaningful, cross curricular opportunities. This ensures that the standard of reading and writing across the curriculum remains consistent. Planning for English is based primarily around the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme for Key Stage 1 and Literacy Counts planning, with CLPE Power of Reading teaching sequences and other quality resources used to supplement and enhance the curriculum on offer to our pupils in Year 2 and beyond.

All pupils within the EYFS at Oxton St Saviour’s are taught to develop their English skills as an integral part of the topic work covered during the academic year. English objectives are underpinned by the areas of learning and development that are required to shape educational programmes in early years settings.

At Oxton St Saviour’s, we teach children to form letters with the correct pencil grip and in the correct sitting position from the very beginning using the RWI handwriting programme. By stage 3 of the programme, children learn to use a cursive writing style. They practise handwriting regularly so they learn to write quickly and easily. Children in Key Stage 2 continue to form letters correctly using resources for the teaching of handwriting including the Collins handwriting scheme.

Wherever possible, the teaching of grammar and punctuation at Oxton St Saviour’s is incorporated into text based English lessons although there will be occasions when it is necessary to teach discrete grammar lessons. Resources for the teaching of grammar include the Babcock No Nonsense Grammar Scheme and SPAG.com.

When children at Oxton St Saviour’s leave the Read Write Inc phonics programme, they receive weekly spelling teaching using the Purple Mash scheme of work. In all lessons, children from Year 1 onwards are actively taught to use spelling lists, dictionaries, working walls and other classroom resources to independently check their spellings.

Impact

The progress and development of pupils within the EYFS is assessed against the early learning goals outlined in the ‘Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage’.

From Year 1 upwards, children’s English skills are assessed by: 

• Half termly reading assessments (one assessment in autumn term) which may include formative assessments, RWI phonic assessments, Salford reading assessments, Rising Star assessments or previous SAT papers.
• Independent writing activities that can be used alongside other pieces of work in English books to build a picture of children’s attainment in writing.
• Regular spelling and grammar assessments which may include formative assessments, formal and informal spelling tests, Rising Star assessments or previous SAT papers.

Teacher assessments are recorded half termly on Target Tracker. This data is used by teachers and the English lead to assess and track children’s progress.

Staff subject knowledge  is continuously developed throughout the year through training courses, moderation opportunities and lesson observations. Teaching and learning within this subject is regularly monitored by the subject leader.

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