English

Intent - why we teach what we teach. 

Writing

We believe that our children will develop a lifelong appreciation and desire for quality literature. We believe the study of English develops the children's abilities to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. It enables them to express themselves creatively and imaginatively. We strive for all our children to learn to communicate meaning through engaging writing activities where they can express their emotions, thoughts and opinions both imaginatively and factually for a variety of audiences. We follow a writing pathway to ensure a clear, well-sequenced progression of skills throughout school. See the ‘Pathways to Writing’ section below for more information. Children will be encouraged to develop as individual writers learning over time to use effective transcription and composition skills. They will be taught how to plan, revise, draft and review their writing, forming, articulating and communicating ideas and organising them coherently for the reader. We are proud of what our children can achieve and work is displayed around school for all to share.  

Implementation - how we teach what we teach.

Pathways is a methodology designed to equip pupils with key skills to move them through the writing process towards their final outcome. It is built around units of work that follow a mastery approach to the teaching of writing. To support this approach, clear detailed lesson plans and resources are linked to a high-quality text. Pathways to Write ensures engaging and purposeful English lessons. 

Each unit covers a range of areas in the national curriculum: Mastery of vocabulary; grammar and punctuation skills; writing a range of genres across a year; vocabulary development; using a wider range of reading comprehension strategies as a whole class; spoken language activities including drama and presentations. There are also opportunities for practising previously taught genres and opportunities for extended independent pieces of writing. This process follows three stages:

The Gateway 

Begin at the Gateway with a ‘hook’ session to intrigue and enthuse young writers

Use objects, people, images or role-play to stimulate questions about the chosen text

Give pupils the opportunity to predict the text

Establish the purpose and audience of the writing

Revisit previous mastery skills and ongoing skills

The Pathway 

Introduce pupils to three new writing skills from their year group curriculum

Provide opportunities to practise and apply the skill they have learnt through short and extended writing tasks including character descriptions, poetry, dialogue between characters, fact files or diary entries in role

Provide opportunities to re-cap and apply previously taught skills

Challenge greater depth writers through a wider range of tasks e.g. changes to form, viewpoint and audience

Writeaway 

Section and sequence texts independently or collaboratively

Create extended pieces of writing over time

Opportunity to apply mastery skills

Time for planning, writing, checking, editing, redrafting and publishing

A fiction or non-fiction outcome will be written (covering a wide range of genres and themes over the year)

To find out more information about Pathways to Write follow this link:

https://www.theliteracycompany.co.uk/product/pathways-to-write/

Impact - how we measure what we teach.

The impact of the writing curriculum is that children will be confident writers and will learn to communicate meaning through their writing where they can express their emotions, thoughts and opinions both imaginatively and factually for a variety of audiences. The children’s learning journey in writing is assessed each term using the current assessment framework.  It is reported on formally to parents through parent’s evenings, mini reports and a final end of year report.   The progress of each child will be tracked throughout their time at Mossley. We constantly internally and externally moderate to ensure consistency within our judgements.  

Spelling.

Intent - why we teach what we teach.

We want our children to be able to confidently spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns, rules and high frequency words that they learn throughout their time in primary school.  We aim to make spelling an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.

Implementation - how we teach what we teach.

At Mossley we teach spelling as a discrete subject as well as encouraging children to practise and apply spelling patterns that they have learned in all other curriculum areas.  In KS1 spelling is taught through daily phonics sessions and the teaching of spelling patterns daily including high frequency words.  In KS2 spelling continues to be taught discretely at least three times a week and this will also include re-capping on previous spelling patterns and the teaching of high frequency words.

Spelling Shed is a spelling scheme that we use to ensure coverage and progression across the school.  It is divided into six stages, each stage corresponding to the respective school year. Within each stage, there are weekly objectives and spelling lists that give a steady progression through the English curriculum but also offers opportunities for our children to review spellings and attempt additional challenge lists to extend vocabulary. Spelling Shed has been developed to cover all spelling targets within the National Curriculum but additionally it offers further support for learning high frequency words for each key stage.

The Spelling Shed helps children to practise spelling via simple games. The game gives four different degrees of support in the form of difficulty modes; Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme. Higher levels allow a higher score to be achieved but children can practise as much as they like on lower levels before trying to gain high scores. The scores achieved give a league position and each class has its own league position within a school league. It also creates a supportive environment for our learners to practice and master their spellings at their own pace. The programme also provides our pupils with a more interactive whole- class spelling test known as a ‘Hive game’ which continues to engage all of our learners and continue to create a fun environment for practicing spellings.  Each week, teachers will set lists of words that children should practise and will monitor their progress over the week and provide opportunities for their pupils to practice within school.  In the celebration assembly on a Friday we announce the top Spelling Shed speller for KS1 and KS2 and this child will receive a certificate. 

In addition to our spelling scheme, the children are also required to learn what are known as high frequency words. High frequency words are words that appear often in written texts. They are a mixture of decodable words (words that can be sounded out) and tricky / exception words (words in which the English spelling code works in an unusual or uncommon way, which means the words must be learned and recognised by sight).

It is incredibly important that our children learn how to read these words as they will make up a large proportion of the text in which they are exposed to during their journey through school. They also need to learn to spell these words, as they will find that they will need to use these regularly within their written work. Each of these are an additional list on spelling shed that will be consistently taught by your child/children’s teacher throughout the year.

In Reception, children will be given around 45 high frequency words to learn over the year – the aim is for them to be able to recognise these words and to be able to read them. Children learn these words as part of their phonics lessons and may also bring high frequency words home to read. Additional high frequency words are then included in each of child’s further classes as the child continue their journey through our school.

Impact - how we measure what we teach.

Children are assessed daily within their writing to ensure they are applying spelling patterns and their knowledge of high frequency words. They are also assessed termly using GAPs assessment which includes a spelling section.  This allows teachers to set targets and to know the areas of spelling that the children need to work on.  Progress is reported on formally to parents through parent’s evenings, mini reports and a final end of year report.   The progress of each child will be tracked throughout their time at Mossley.

Vocabulary and Technical lessons.

Intent - why we teach what we teach.

We aim for our children to be able to understand and use new and ambitious vocabulary appropriate to their writing.  We want them to be able to apply a variety of different sentence types within their work to engage the reader and ensure coherence.

Implementation - how we teach what we teach.

The children receive discrete teaching of ambitious vocabulary and sentence types at least twice a week linked to the current genre of writing.  The Alan Peat sentence types are used and split between the year groupsto ensure progression and coverage. The new vocabulary and sentence types are applied to the writing process through our pathways scheme. 

Impact - how we measure what we teach.

Children are assessed regularly through marking of work to see whether they are applying vocabulary and sentence types into their writing as well as the regular assessment of these skills during technical lessons.  

Handwriting.

Intent - why we teach what we teach.

At Mossley we aim for our pupils to develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters that leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing.

By the end of Year 6 pupils will understand the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly. 

We aim to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.   As a catalyst to speedy handwriting we encourage parents and carers to use our Mossley cursive resources at home to help their children to practise their handwriting.

Implementation - how we teach what we teach.

Handwriting is a cross-curriculum task and will be taken into consideration during all lessons. Formal teaching of handwriting is to be carried out regularly and systematically to ensure Key Stage targets are met. 

EYFS: 

For our youngest pupils we aim daily sessions totalling 15 minutes a day as and when the children are ready, that will include the following;

• Movements to enhance gross motor skills such as air-writing, pattern making, dancing, dough disco.
• Exercises to develop fine motor skills such as making marks on paper, whiteboards, blackboards, sand trays.
• Letter learning to familiarise letter shapes, formation and vocabulary.

SKILLS TO BE TAUGHT

• Sit in the correct position and hold a pencil correctly to allow fluid movement of the nib.
• Improve fine and gross motor skills by enjoying drawing pre-cursive patterns in a variety of writing materials such as modelling clay, air writing, sand trays, felt pens, crayons, pencils, IWB.
• Understand the language need to describe pencil movements in preparation of letter formation.
• Hold a pencil in an effective manner for writing and be encouraged to correct any errors in grip or stature.
• Have an understanding of writing their own name.
• Understanding different shaped letter families and form letters from these families (see document).
• Children to be taught a discrete handwriting session for 10/15 minutes.
• To assess children after each letter family is taught. 
• EYFS to use their additional handwriting progression document.

Years 1 to 3: 

Tuition will continue as daily sessions totalling 15/30 minutes a day covering:

• Gross and fine motor skills exercises such as cutting skills and warm up activities for hands and fingers.
• Modelled handwriting for children by staff.
• Cursive handwriting reinforcement, learning and practice.
• Numerals, capitals and printed letters: where and when to use, learning and practice.
• Handwriting interventions for the children that need it.

SKILLS TO BE TAUGHT:

• Write legibly using upper and lower case letters with correct joins.
• Understanding different shaped letter families for cursive letters and form letters from these families
• Form all letters in a cursive style and once they know the whole alphabet begin to join words.
• Ensure that letters sit on the base line and are consistent in size with ascenders and descenders that are the correct length and formation.
• Leave the correct space between words.
• Form capital letters and use where appropriate.
• Form numerals that are consistent in size and sit on the base line.
• Begin to form printed letters and understand when they are to be used.
• Improve the speed of writing and begin to write automatically so promoting creativity in independent writing. 

Years 4 to 6: 

Bespoke handwriting interventions for children who still need to work on their cursive handwriting/fine motor skills. (Early Birds) 

Skills to be taught:

Improve quality, speed and stamina of handwriting.

• Quality: Ensure letters are consistently sized with equal word spacing and that ascenders and descenders are parallel and do not touch words on the lines above and below.
• Speed: Improve speed of handwriting to allow creative writing to take precedence over the task of handwriting and be able to take ‘quick notes’ at a faster pace.
• Stamina: Have the strength and mobility to be able to write for longer periods of time without fatigue.
• Have full knowledge and ability of the different forms of handwriting for different purposes:   
• Neat, joined, cursive letters for writing passages and large amounts of text, lists and letters.
• Printed or capital letters for posters, notices, headings, labelling, and form filling.
• Speedy handwriting for note-taking and dictation where neatness is not as important and shortcuts, such as + instead of ‘and’, can be used.

Impact - how we measure what we teach.

Children are assessed regularly through marking of work to see whether they are applying the skills taught to them in handwriting sessions into their writing as well as the regular assessment of handwriting during handwriting sessions.  We put an emphasis on the children applying skills taught in handwriting to their everyday writing. 

 If you would like further information about the curriculum Mossley School follows please feel free to speak with your child's class teacher or call the school office on 01260 272451

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