Learning
Writing at Northcote
Our Northcote Curriculum is designed with the intent to maximise potential of all of our pupils; intellectually, socially, morally, emotionally and culturally. We take every opportunity to encourage a love for learning within all of our pupils, based around a resilience for learning and achieving greatness. Most importantly we allow our children to learn in a safe and stimulating environment, where their views are valued.
English is delivered through both discrete English lessons and through opportunities for purposeful cross curricular links.
English lessons are delivered daily, with intervention for sentence construction, handwriting and spelling ran separately. GPS lessons are taught discretely in the afternoon and skills are applied across the curriculum.
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Intent:
Our aim is to develop a purpose for writing, that engages children of all ages and abilities and we will be looking for as many opportunities as we can to develop and engage children.
Implementation:
We develop our writing skills as we progress from mark making in the EYFS, to using a range of sentence types in KS2. All teachers immerse children in the genre they are studying, through a wide variety of age-related texts and extra-curricular stimulii, then support children in the planning of their own writing. The writing process is clearly modelled by teaching staff and displayed on working walls in our classrooms. In addition to this, all classes have access to support from a well-trained Learning Support Assistant (LSA). Within class, work is differentiated to ensure challenge and support at all levels. We also use staggered starts as a teaching strategy to ensure teachers can provide high quality input to all abilities. Year 6 pupils are taught in 3 smaller ability grouped classes. We all use ‘Alan Peat’ sentences – from Year 1 upwards – in our writing and posters are displayed in our classroom as prompts. Handwriting is a central focus within our school, ensuring that children’s writing is joined and cursive. Writing is celebrated throughout the school on displays and also on our live Twitter feed. We now have over sixty published authors and are involved in two other national writing competitions currently. We ensure cross-curricular writing is embedded in all year groups and curriculum areas.
Writing is marked using the school marking policy. Spellings are corrected by staff, or highlighted to be corrected by the children. English work is marked with an English comment. This is followed by a CARE (Check and Respond Everyone) comment, if necessary, to extend or challenge thinking. Cross-curricular writing is marked with a subject focus comment, but additional English comments may be added. Children respond to their marking in red pen.
Phonics is used to teach spelling in EYFS and KS1 and we follow our own spelling curriculum, which links all of the vocabulary from our topics with the words list from the National Curriculum. We have a whole school GPS coverage document, which we have devised to suit the need of our children, whilst ensuring progress within and across year groups. To view this document, click the link below:
Northcote Whole School Coverage linked to termly tests.pdf
Impact:
We have a rising trend in writing data in our school, year upon year and are very proud of the achievements we have made.
Children say,
“I like a lot of things about writing. I like making an image in my head of what the story is and then use the descriptosaurus to help me write.” (Ava, Year 6)
“We are doing Black Beauty. We have watched the film and then shared our ideas. The working wall helps me with my writing.” (Emma, Year 5)
Parents say,
“Enjoyed session, interesting to see how my child can be imaginative and creative. It was fun to join in.”