English

Intent

At Chater Junior School our intent is for all pupils to develop a passion for writing by providing them with the skills and knowledge to be creative and ambitious with words. Writing opens doors to wider opportunities and is an essential skill to fully participate in society. We aim for the pupils to discover their inner author and use writing as a way of expressing themselves. Grammar and tiered vocabulary are taught explicitly to ensure that pupils are able to understand the conventions of writing and create engaging reads for the audience. As reading unlocks the curriculum, writing is the tool that pupils use to articulate their thoughts and express their creativity.

Implementation

At Chater Junior School, we ensure that our English planning follows a clear progression of skills and ensures that there is full coverage of, ‘The National Curriculum programmes of study for English 2014’. The curriculum is adapted and extended to match all pupils’ needs and builds upon their prior knowledge and skills. We endeavour to practise English skills in all subjects across the curriculum; appreciating that they are the fundamental building blocks for learning as a whole. We use ‘The Power of Reading’ teaching approach to deliver a text based English curriculum but we also include two Take 1 Picture units, two Take 1 Book units and two Story Telling units across the academic year.

Before teaching each unit teachers will:

• - Select an appropriate and high-quality text from the Power of Reading resources.
• - Select appropriate complementary texts for whole-class guided reading where necessary.
• - Choose three writing outcomes based around the text.
• - Assess pupils’ prior knowledge and skills and use this to ensure their planning builds upon this.
• - Plan a sequence of lessons that provide the knowledge and skills required for the written outcomes and chosen reading objectives.

 During each unit teachers will:

• - Provide pupils’ with plenty of opportunities to read the selected text alongside any additional texts selected.
• - Provide pupils’ with opportunities to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas within a text.
• - Provide pupils’ with high quality examples of relevant written outcomes as good models to follow.
• - Ensure modelled writing is of a high quality to provide pupils with.
• - Teach the skills of planning, drafting, editing and proof reading their writing.
• - Teach the relevant grammar and punctuation skills required for the selected written outcomes.
• - Give opportunities for pupils to explore features of a variety of genres.

 At the end of each unit pupils will:

• - Produce extended pieces of writing based around the text.
• - Reflect on the effectiveness of their writing and show an awareness of their audience.

 After each unit teachers will:

• - Assess pupils’ understanding of the written outcomes.
• - Use the assessments to inform future planning of skills that need to be revisited.

Impact

What will this look like?

Through pupil voice we will see:

• - Pupils explain what makes their writing effective and what they could to do to further improve it.
• - Pupils take pride in their work and willingly share successes and areas for improvement.
• - Pupils analyse their own work for grammatical errors and explain their own word choices.

Through learning walks we will see:

• - Pupils provided with opportunities to express themselves passionately in a range of writing genres.
• - Both pupils and teachers refer to grammatical expectations for writing.
• - Pupils reflect on their own writing and discuss with others.

In the pupil’s learning we will see:

• - A passion for English through the quality of work produced.
• - Take pride in their learning and present work of a high standard.
• - Evidence of writing for an audience and within the context.
• - Pupils who are reflective of their writing, frequently editing, redrafting and refining their work.
• - Scaffolds that enable all pupils to make progress.