English

Intent
Why do we teach this? Why do we teach it in the way we do?
At Edlington Victoria Academy, we strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners; English learning is key in this. The writing curriculum builds progressively towards ambitious end-points. The curriculum purposefully allows knowledge to be revisited to support pupils to achieve fluency and master concepts in writing. Our key principle is that pupils will be supported to develop fluency and automaticity in key skills before moving on to compositional tasks and developing disciplinary knowledge as a writer.  We often use a text-based approach, which links closely to the way we teach reading and the core text we are using.

Our intentions in writing are for children to:

• Write for a purpose
• See themselves as real writers
• Take ownership of their writing
• See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process
• Acquire the ability to organise, plan and edit their written work

Implementation
What do we teach? What does this look like?
Staff use our writing intent document to carefully plan out and deliver the writing curriculum. The transcriptional and compositional skills have been outlined for each year.  Each year group has been broken down into three stages which need to be secured throughout the year; these can be broken down into termly learning. The generic outcomes relating to all areas of use have been identified for each year group. These are drawn upon when planning all writing teaching sequences. It is the embedding of these skills in particular which will have the greatest impact on pupil outcomes and allow them to make secure progress in their writing. The programmes of study for writing distinguish between ‘transcription’ and ‘composition’. Pupils need sufficient capacity in their working memory to plan, compose and review effectively. This requires transcription skills to be secure. As a result, fluent transcription skills should be a critical focus for the Early Years and Key Stage 1. Our curriculum includes using dictated sentences in Year 1 to apply and practise spelling. Explicit teaching of foundational skills, including spelling and handwriting, sentence construction, control of grammar and use of vocabulary, allows all pupils to write effectively. Cycles of planning, drafting, revising and editing are also used in the teaching of writing.