English 2023 - 2024
Mr Hewitt
Miss Walsh
At Grove Street Primary our collective aim is to develop pupils’ abilities through an integrated programme of oracy, reading, writing, grammar, punctuation, spelling and vocabulary development. A broad and balanced approach to the teaching of English is applied across the curriculum, allowing for the consolidation of taught skills within all learning. We provide a rich environment in which all children can enjoy learning, build self-esteem and develop life-long reading, writing and oracy skills.
Features of Road to Writing
Daily Sentence Construction (KS2)
Each lesson begins with a ten-minute daily sentence construction activity, which through dictation and reading fluency, allows children to revise and revisit all elements of the GPS curriculum, strengthening their understanding and application of sentence construction.
Voice 21 (Oracy) at Grove Street Primary
Oracy permeates through all areas of our curriculum. In our English lessons, Oracy is an explicitly planned and purposeful feature of each lesson – this could be a means to the end or the outcome itself. All aspects of Oracy (physical, linguistic, cognitive, social & emotional) are developed through a variety of activities and outcomes.
Shared & Modelled Writing
We believe children should experience the process of effective and exciting writing and this starts with effective shared and modelled writing. Not only does this allow our children to see how GPS features can be weaved into a variety of different text-types and genres, but also allows modelling of the creative process of writing.
Planning
Children are given an opportunity to plan their writing as part of the formal writing process, allowing them to organise their ideas and gain a deeper understanding of the demands and intricacies of different text-types and genres.
Drafting
Through drafting their ideas, children have the freedom to explore the creative process of writing, make mistakes and develop their understanding of audience and formality. Week 2 of the process allows the children to begin drafting and building ideas and passages that can be built upon in their final piece of independent writing.
Revising & Editing
At every stage of writing, children have opportunities to edit and improve their writing with a focus on the specific ‘reader’ of that piece. This is not simply correcting errors but also giving the opportunity to edit for effect and impact.
Publishing & Performance
Children have the opportunity to publish a final piece of writing in each unit, as well as performing or reading aloud their piece to peers from the same or a different year group.
Purpose and Audience – Scale of Formality
Each piece of writing has a specific purpose linked to its outcome and intended ‘reader’, which is placed on a scale of formality. Resulting GPS features and their application are regularly linked to audience, purpose and the level of formality.
Feedback
Feedback is a purposeful and continual feature of our writing pedagogy. Teachers give direct and actionable feedback whilst also modelling effective self and peer assessment.
Reading Fluency & Reading Comprehension
Whole class reading lessons are built into our bespoke writing model. Lessons begin with a focus on teaching reading fluency with children given the opportunity to orally rehearse the text they are looking at several times before moving into comprehension questions.
Text Choice / Satellite Texts / British Values / Grove Street Reading Spine
We have carefully selected high-quality engaging and diverse texts for our children, books we believe will entertain, engage and inform, reflecting their own realities as well as opening doors to new worlds, people and experiences. Each text comes with three additional satellite texts (texts linked in theme, concept or tone to the key text) that are used as part of the weekly reading lesson. Through our careful selection of books, we see literature as a fantastic opportunity to expand and strengthen our children’s understanding and application of British Values. Additional to the books they encounter in their writing lessons, we have also worked hard to create a curriculum reading spine that ensures the same high-quality access to texts in every area of the curriculum. On occasion, children might encounter a text more than once in different contexts – we consider these ‘happy accidents’ to long-term memory.
Writing Moderation
Moderation of writing takes place termly with the teacher working alongside the English Lead to ensure clarity and consistency of moderation and judgements. Additionally, we take part in cluster moderation sessions across the schools in our local area.
Statutory Requirements
The English Curriculum is delivered using the new National Curriculum English Document for all year groups and the Early Years Foundation Stage (2020).
Please see the Reading and Writing Intent, Implementation and Impact documents, as well as long-term maps and progression planning for our own bespoke writing model.