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 picture texts each half term, through which they will explore both ficiton and non-fiction genres.
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 begin with the exploration of a text during our reading phase. We do this by developing the children's understanding of vocabulary, contents and making inferences about what they have read. We then progress into the gathering content phase, where the children exploring the existing texts and begin to make changes to prepare for writing their own. Finally, they will complete the process with the writing phase where they will use the knowledge and sklills they have been taught, to write their own version of the genre.
Handwriting
Handwriting is taught from Year 1 upwards. We teach this through the Read Write Inc letter village programme. Children are introduced to cursive handwriting when they are ready, from Year 3 onwards.
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
Positive proof reading – Pupils are encouraged self-assess all pieces of their work and time is dedicated to this at the end of every writing lesson. Children are presented with a success criteria of skills that are the main focus of the lesson and are then given time to identify where they have done this within their work.
Fix it time - Following on from the above and positive proof reading and teacher's marking, children are given time the following day to make improvements to their work where they see fit or where an adult has identified. This is completed by the children in purple pen.
Half -termly assessments are made of pupils’ writing in order to establish the level of attainment and progress and to inform future planning.
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 by exposing the children to a range of high quality texts or extracts of text. During these lessons the children will explore vocabulary and answer a variety of questions based on the six content domains (vocabualry, inference, prediction, explain, retrieval and summarise).