English: Writing
Our goal is for every child to leave school as a confident and effective communicator with a passion for writing. English is taught as a discrete subject every day. Our carefully designed ‘Units of Work’, developed by expert teachers, follow a structured process allowing our pupils to develop the skills and processes essential to writing, in a sequential manner: discussion, planning, writing, editing and redrafting. Weekly, the children produce an extended piece of writing, further applying and demonstrating the skills that they have developed.
At SWB, we have designed a unique English curriculum using texts specifically chosen to provide high-quality language and writing models, as well as inspire creativity and stimulate ideas and enthusiasm for writing. Other oracy activities, including drama, further support idea generation; emphasis is also placed on children planning for writing, considering the text type, audience and purpose. During their time at SWB, children are introduced to and taught how to write in varied styles including narratives, persuasive, journalistic, recount and information reports. Our pupils are explicitly taught how to craft varied sentence structures and apply grammar and punctuation accurately. Varied learning opportunities, as well as direct teaching at the beginning of lessons, supports all of our pupils to develop and make ambitious vocabulary choices too.
‘Steps to Success’ are used to guide children as they craft each extended writing piece; this is further complemented by careful teacher modelling too. During lessons, teachers ‘circulate’ the classroom providing high-impact verbal feedback to support all pupils to make accelerated progress in-the-moment.
In addition to our daily discrete English lessons, grammar skills are taught in dedicated weekly lessons, reinforcing skills practised in English lessons. Additionally, children participate in weekly spelling lessons, learning rules and conventions, followed with assigned spellings set for homework that are tested the following week.
