Vision

Our pupils will enjoy articulating themselves with flair and confidence. They will be independent writers who adapt language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

Curriculum Design: How our curriculum is constructed and why?

 

Curriculum Structure Overview

At Roxbourne, we believe that children should be exposed to a wide range of genres that they will encounter in the real world so that they can express themselves creatively through different forms. Therefore, we ensure that children focus on the four main writing purposes - to entertain and inform (all year groups), to persuade (Years 3-6) and discuss (Years 5-6) across the year to deepen their understanding of audience and purpose. In order to contextualise their Writing, our Writing curriculum is also tightly linked to our Humanities curriculum. This allows children to make cross-curricular links contextually, as well as recall and use vocabulary from both their Humanities and Reading lessons. Each half-term, children focus on one writing purpose in order to deepen their understanding of one genre before moving onto the next. Children explore high-quality text types linked to the specific purpose each half-term, such as stories and descriptions when writing to entertain, or letters when writing to inform or persuade. They are immersed into the context of their writing, discussing audience and purpose, before focusing on planning and writing themselves. Children write two independent pieces every half term, amounting to six pieces of writing at the end of the year showcasing their range of writing skills for different audiences and purposes.

Spelling Overview

We believe that good writers need ideas and vocabulary, and in order to do this, children need to be taught explicit and systematic strategies to spell correctly. These strategies will allow children to reduce their cognitive load and free their mind to focus on other aspects of writing. Therefore, we use the Read Write Inc. scheme to teach Spellings from Years 3-5. The programme is a robust, fast-paced systematic spelling programme designed for fluent readers who are no longer on the Phonics programme. It has proved itself to be an effective and popular programme in schools nationwide. The programme ensures that children spell new words correctly and have plenty of practice spelling them, including exception words and homophones. Children learn to spell words as accurately as possible using their phonic knowledge and are supported in understanding and applying the concepts of word structure. At Roxbourne, Spelling lessons are taught for 15 minutes, four times a week. Children are given a short spelling test on a Friday to recall common exception words taught during the week with a ‘Speed Spell’ session every Monday to recall spelling words taught in the previous unit. Children are also given a ‘log book’ where they record any tricky spelling words to take home and practise.

Handwriting Overview

As with Spelling, handwriting skills are a key component of writing. We follow the Read Write Inc. handwriting guidance, using a non-cursive method of writing in order to form letters and joins. Handwriting is explicitly taught in Years 1-4. In Years 5-6, teachers assess pupils’ handwriting and targeted practice is given to pupils who require more support. We celebrate handwriting weekly during our celebration assemblies, and children from Years 2-6 are able to achieve a pen licence certificate and handwriting pen for consistent and neat handwriting.

Curriculum Delivery: What our curriculum looks and feels like in action?

EYFS Curriculum

In EYFS, children begin with mark-making as they learn how to correctly hold a pencil, before recognising and forming letters. They focus predominantly on story-telling and sequencing, where children focus on orally holding a sentence and then writing sentences using very simple punctuation. This is further supported by their Phonics knowledge.

Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 Curriculum

Writing lessons are carefully sequenced. All writing lessons begin with a ‘Do Now’ activity which allows all children to recall prior knowledge or prepare them for the learning ahead. The key learning objective is made clear to the children as well as the lesson outcome through the success criteria. Children are then introduced to, or recall key vocabulary needed for that lesson. In order to ensure teachers and pupils are actively working together, we follow a three-week cycle of Writing. This allows children to deepen their learning in different genres and text types before consolidating their learning by moving them towards a more independent style of writing. The cycle is as follows:

Week 1: Children are introduced to the half-term’s purpose. The week involves immersion strategies based around the text type linked to that purpose. Strategies include research activities to ensure they understand the context of their writing as well as exploring high quality extracts or videos to broaden their knowledge of the topic. We value the importance of oracy when developing language and teamwork skills, and so children love taking part in group or paired activities such as role-play and debates. In younger years, this includes storytelling and drawing story maps. Grammar and vocabulary play a vital role in this immersion week. As per the National Curriculum guidance, children complete grammar and vocabulary activities linked to the text type which are further embedded through ‘Do Now’ tasks and looking at model texts. They explore a modelled example of writing for that genre and the criteria for what makes a piece of writing successful. Using this model text, children analyse the layout and features of the text using the criteria, exploring why these features are important.

Week 2: In Week 2, children begin by planning their writing using 'box planning', a method inspired by Pie Corbett's 'Talk for Writing'. The writing process then involves a modelled write, where there is heavy input from the class teacher and is fully supported and scaffolded so that all pupils can access the learning. Pupils may use sentence starters, word banks, pictures and any other extra support when writing. Alternatively, pupils are always encouraged to still share their thoughts and ideas as this also allows space for challenging pupils when needed. This week gives pupils the opportunity to observe how a text is written and the thought process behind sentence structure and formation before writing it themselves. Children are given time at the end of the week to review and edit their work, based on feedback from the class teacher as well as their peers. They are encouraged to refer back to the success criteria so that they are confident in using the features.

Week 3: In Week 3, children complete the same style of writing but it is written in a different context. They use ‘box planning’ to plan their writing and as children are much more confident after being supported in Week 2, they are able to write mostly independently. Teachers assess what sections children may need more support with. Children edit their work against the success criteria with minimal input from an adult and mostly self or peer-assessed work through discussion. Children publish a neat version of their independent writing into their Writing Portfolio, and the cycle continues.

Impact: How do we know our pupils are learning, understanding and remembering our intended curriculum?

Pupils are summatively assessed twice every half-term once they have completed their independent piece during Week 3 of our Writing cycle. Based on the National Curriculum targets, we use an assessment grid for each year group to analyse what targets children have met and what they have yet to develop using the independent pieces of work in their Writing Portfolios, as well as examples from their Writing exercise books. This allows teachers to make a judgement on whether a child is or is not working at the given standard based on age-related expectations. To ensure accuracy, we ensure moderation processes are completed during the year within our school, often also moderating writing with other schools across the local area. Teachers’ reflections on their pupils' written work at the end of each half-term gives a basis for what gaps are focused on for their Medium Term Planning in the next unit. In regard to Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling, children are summatively assessed through completing GAPS test papers once a term. This formal method of assessment gives teachers a clear indication of whether pupils are working at age-related expectations and where children need more focused teaching. Spelling is also assessed through our Read Write Inc. Spelling programme. Children complete six practice tests throughout the year where teachers are given time to consolidate learning and use the data from these practice assessments to support their teaching of spelling. This culminates into one end of year assessment paper.

Enrichment in Writing

Our Writing curriculum is carefully designed to relate to the community we serve. We choose a wide range of authors and genres so that pupils are able to connect with different historical and contextual narratives, as closely linked to our Humanities and Reading curriculum. With a large proportion of EAL pupils, we ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for speaking and listening, including oracy activities embedded into our teaching structure as well as enrichment days tailored to ensure all pupils take part. We take opportunities to link our Writing curriculum to the outer community, such as exploring poetry by Michael Rosen (who was born in Harrow) during our poetry units or encouraging children to write poetry linked to Remembrance Day as part of their wider connection to Britain.

We believe that pupils’ enjoyment is key to a high-quality, transformational education. Our broad enrichment programme allows children to deepen their understanding of topics, and these cross-curricular links allow children to contextualise their writing, applying vocabulary and knowledge across subjects. We annually take part in national celebrations, including National Writing Day and National Poetry Day. These opportunities allow children to work together and encourage a love of writing through class performances and competitions. We also encourage pupils to take part in individual competitions, including BBC’s 500 Words Story competition and our local Remembrance Day poetry competition, where one successful pupil was invited to meet the Mayor of Harrow!