English

Writing

At Bredbury St Mark’s Primary School, we intend to create confident writers who develop stamina for writing throughout their school life. Our aim is that all of our children will be independent writers, building on a range of skills as they work through each writing journey. Throughout this journey, we aim to ensure that our children are immersed in a range of genres and have a clear understanding of writing for a purpose. They will have a secure understanding of the purpose of a text type, the purpose and intended impact of writing skills/tools and the ability to select vocabulary with careful attention of the desired effect on the readers’ thoughts and feelings. Our children are challenged and encouraged to take risks and view mistakes as another part of the learning process. We also encourage them to set high expectations for themselves, taking pride in all aspects of their learning and everything that they produce.

  • Children will experience a range of quality and engaging texts that inspire and motivate both boys and girls to write.
  • They will be exposed to rich vocabulary through different genres that will widen their imagination and stimulate them, allowing them to understand that writing has a real purpose and that word choice and style can bring about change.
  • We will encourage children to be resilient, resourceful learners who strive to succeed and take responsibility for their own learning; equipped with the skills they require to carefully select appropriate resources to support their learning.
  • They will recognise the importance of the editing and redrafting process to improve their writing.
  • Children will leave St Mark’s as competent, confident and fluent writers.

How the Subject is Planned

At St Mark’s, we have created a long-term plan for writing that maps out different genres and text types in each year group. Each year group will focus on a high quality text each half term, through which they will explore both ficiton and non-fiction genres. Where possible, texts have been carefully chosen to link to, support and extend writing in topic areas. Planning for writing is continually reviewed and adapted to link with curriculum design and the national curriculum.

Pupils are taught through modelling and practising skills for speaking, listening, reading and writing to enable them to succeed in learning and to lead rewarding lives. We teach the children through a sequence of lessons that enables them to develop their vocabulary and grammar in the early stages, which then allows them to produce increasingly well rounded, high quality texts. 

Spelling

There is a high expectation within the National Curriculum that children will learn many increasingly complex words. At St Mark’s, we use the Read, Write Inc. Spelling Scheme to teach spellings to ensure coverage and consistency of teaching across the school.  Children are given the opportunity to practise a range of strategies for learning spellings. Once rules are taught and embedded, there is the expectation that these words will be spelled correctly in independent writing in all subjects. 

Handwriting

Cursive handwriting is taught from Year 1.

Teaching Approaches

Sequences of English lessons typically begin by using high quality texts so that the children can learn from different authors and styles of writing, copying both their structure and style. Texts are broken down so that pupils understand the mechanics of the writing, the grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and sentence structure. This is followed by shared and modelled writing with the teacher, which helps to nurture the children’s fluency and creativity. The children then apply their skills in independent pieces of writing which are finally edited and improved by the individual child as well as receiving some input from their peers. Children are taught to edit their writing for grammar, punctuation, spelling and style.

Marking, feedback and reporting

Feedback is an integral part of all lessons; it is an essential tool to enable pupil’s progress. A range of feedback used during writing:

Peer Feedback – Within all lessons, pupils are given the opportunity to discuss their learning and understanding with each other. They share ideas and learn from one another through sharing work.

Teacher Feedback – Verbal feedback is given throughout all lessons. Teachers are giving feedback to pupils as they continually assess their learning. Written feedback is provided using the schools marking policy

Self-Assessment Feedback – Pupils are encouraged self-assess during extended pieces of writing. Targeted questions are given to the pupils to help them analyse and assess their own learning and identify areas for further improvement and development.

Half -termly assessments are made of pupils’ writing in order to establish the level of attainment and progress and to inform future planning. 

Cross-curricular

Good quality writing is also expected in other subjects, such as science and topic, giving the children opportunities to write for different purposes.

Reading

At St Mark’s we believe that the ability to read is fundamental to pupils’ development as independent learners, during their time at school and beyond. Reading is central to our ability to understand, interpret and communicate with each other and the world around us. Therefore, reading is given a high priority at St Mark’s, enabling the children to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers across a wide range and types of literature, including different text types and genres, book, songs, magazines, poems and newspapers. 

The objectives of reading at Bredbury St Mark's are: –

  • To become fluent, confident and expressive readers
  • To read with enjoyment across a range of genres
  • To read for pleasure as well as for information
  • To read and respond to a wide range of different types of literature
  • To understand the layout and how to use different genres and text types
  • To understand and apply their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns and use this to decode words with accuracy
  • To build their bank of sight words to enable fluent reading
  • To have an interest in words and their meanings, developing a rich and varied vocabulary

Foundation Stage and KS1

Children at our school start their reading journey through the Read, Write Inc reading scheme. They access books that are approriiate to their reading level and work through them alongside a variety of reading activities to help support and develop this. Alongside the scheme in school, the children will take home books to read at home. These books are matched to their reading level in school and are designed to help them develop the same skills that they are focusing on in school.

Key Stage Two

The expectation for most children, is that by the time they reach Key Stage 2 they have graduated from the Read, Write Inc scheme and are ready to move on to a whole class teaching approach. Whole class teaching of reading in Key Stage 2 is done in two parts. The first part is carried out by exposing the children to a novel, which they focus on for two days of teaching and the second part is carried out by focusing on stand alone texts which help the children to develop their reading and comprehension skills. Both of these sets of lessons involve exploring texts and answering a variety of questions based on the six content domains (vocabualry, inference, prediction, explain, retrieval and summarise).

 

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Bredbury St Marks CE Primary School
Redhouse Lane, Bredbury, Stockport, SK6 1BX

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