English - Writing

Intent

At Hormead, we endeavour to create a love for English in all of our children and believe that all children should be able to confidently communicate their ideas and experiences through their writing. We want to develop writers who:

• Think about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and know how they will achieve this;

• Have a sophisticated bank of vocabulary and an excellent knowledge of writing techniques to extend details or description;

• Can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures;

• Display excellent transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated, spelled correctly and neat, and is something they are proud of;

• Re-reads, edits and improves their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability and better than the last.

As well as supporting all of our children in school, we also recognise the importance of parents and carers in developing our pupil’s writing at home. Thus, we want to promote a purposeful home-school partnership, keeping parents up to date with the skills being taught at school and how this can be practiced at home.

Implementation

Our classrooms are equipped with a wide range of resources to support children with their writing such as word banks, modelled examples and appropriate books. As much as possible, our displays consistently promote our cursive handwriting expectations to promote our high expectations of presentation.

Our English lessons and planning follow a set sequence, guided by the principles of HfL (see additional document titled ‘Sequence for Writing’). The children will cover a range of fiction and non-fiction writing genres, taught through the use of rich, stimulating texts. These texts are chosen carefully to act as a suitable stimulus for the intended writing and reading outcomes.

Handwriting, spelling and grammar and punctuation skills are taught, at an age appropriate level, in all of our classrooms, building on the expectations set by the National Curriculum.

All marking and feedback is given in line with our marking and feedback policy. At Hormead, we strongly encourage our children to take ownership of their writing and therefore, self-assessment is a key skill that is developed through KS1 and KS2. We believe that the best feedback is given in the moment, when it can be talked through with a pupil and acted on there and then.

Parents and carers are kept well-informed about the English learning taking place at school, key focus texts used, specific year group expectations and how to support at home.

Impact

• Pupils will enjoy writing across a range of genres and have the knowledge needed to adapt their writing based on context and intended audience.
• Pupils will have a wide bank of vocabulary to use within their writing and the spelling and grammar skills needed to enhance this.
• Pupils of any ability will be able to succeed in their writing and be proud of their writing achievements because work will be appropriately and carefully scaffolded.
• Pupils will be challenged to further improve and develop their writing, always aiming to make it the best it can be.
• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of the English learning taking place at school and feel confident with how they can support at home.

Hormead Writing Progression