INTENT
At Webheath Academy Primary School, we believe that literacy and communication is the foundation of all learning and integral to all aspects of life. Through our English curriculum, we aspire for all children to have the skills and knowledge that will empower them to communicate effectively, imaginatively and creatively through spoken and written word across the whole curriculum and equip them with the skills to become lifelong learners.

Our aim is to ensure every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We want pupils to acquire a rich vocabulary, a solid understanding of grammar and be able to spell new words by effectively applying the spelling patterns and rules they learn throughout their time at Webheath. We strive for them to write clearly, accurately and coherently; adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We aim for our pupils to control their speaking and writing consciously and to use correct Standard English, knowing when and how to experiment with authorial tone and structure. We encourage all pupils to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a quality cursive handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process. We adopt a ‘limitless learning’ approach as we believe that no child should have a ceiling on what they can achieve and we are inclusive to all pupils and make no assumptions in their abilities to make progress.

IMPLEMENTATION
These aims are embedded across our daily English lessons and the wider curriculum. We have a rigorous and well organised English curriculum that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and oracy. At Webheath, we believe that writing is strengthened by instilling a love for reading within our pupils. We value the importance of reading to supplement writing, providing a purpose and a context to writing. We believe that pupils provided with a reason for writing demonstrate flair and effective writing composition, leading to high quality outcomes. Our English curriculum is derived around a sequence of high quality, age-appropriate texts mapped on our long term curriculum plans. (see Core text in files attachments.) We use these texts to create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills; develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres; identify purpose and audience; plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before reviewing the effectiveness of writing by editing, redrafting and publishing a final piece.

We teach English as whole class lessons, so that all children have access to the age-related skills and knowledge contained in the National Curriculum. Furthermore, writing opportunities and good standards of English are valued in all subjects. Core English lessons are supplemented with spelling, punctuation and grammar lessons which correspond to the genre being written to support the writing process. (The Sound Start program, followed by No Nonsense Spelling scheme are followed to sequence the teaching of spelling rules and patterns.) Children are then supported in how to apply spelling, grammar and punctuation within a context through high quality modelling before moving on to plan, draft, review, edit and publish their piece appropriate to the identified audience and purpose. Each year group has KPIs in Reading, Writing and Oracy, a yearly overview of the writing skills, sentence types and the intended writing outcomes for fiction, non-fiction and poetry that will be taught during that year. These have been planned to ensure coverage and exposure to genres is robust and progressive. (See the attached files.)

We endeavor to ensure we provide our pupils with a ‘language rich’ environment. We do this by ensuring children have access and use a wide range of quality text, use of Tier 2 vocabulary (see Tier 2 Word Lists in the attached files), planning and celebrating new and ambitious vocabulary across the whole curriculum to ensure children acquire an understanding of tricky language, and use of displays and working walls. These working walls are current and the learning journey is documented. Class teachers ensure that the writing process is evident on working walls, with modelled examples being available to all pupils as the sequence of lessons develops, and key terminology and vocabulary remain consistent for all pupils to access every day.

Oracy is important to us at Webeheath and we value quality oracy in promoting good communication skills for our pupils to become life-long learners. At Webheath we draw on the Voice 21 program and our Key Performance Indicators for Oracy (see the attached files) as a tool to expose and provide our pupils with opportunities to grow quality oracy skills to ensure pupils can are confident and adapt their style of talk to a variety of contexts and audiences.
In this writing process, children receive frequent feedback from teachers and their peers; teachers endeavor to provide ‘in the moment’ feedback in lessons to maximise impact on the child’s written outcomes. Teachers follow the school’s Marking Policy, use their professional judgement when to conduct a summative assessment and report on the assessment system (Arbor) on the pupils’ standards determined against year specific Key Performance Indicators in in Reading, Writing and Oracy.

Within lessons, teachers and teaching assistants target support in closing the gap for identified pupils and challenge the more able. This may involve a greater level of scaffolding and access to additional support materials such as Writers Toolkits, word banks or a greater level of modelling. More able are given opportunities to extend their writing in a variety of ways, including through showing greater control in their writing, writing from an alternative perspective, discussions aimed at understanding the impact that their writing has on the reader and by using a higher level of vocabulary and grammar features.

IMPACT
The effectiveness and impact of our English Writing, Grammar and Spelling curriculum is measured in a variety of different ways. We use EYFS early Learning Goals to assess our pupils as they complete Year R. National and summative testing to assess pupils’ outcomes for Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling as part of the Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs for Year 6 pupils) and timely summative writing assessments across school which enables pupils’ progress and attainment to be evaluated and inform teachers of pupils’ next steps and successes which are shared with the pupils. Children’s standards are tracked termly (via Arbor- online assessment) and biannual Pupil progress Meetings are held to identify target children to accelerate standards and close gaps. Additionally, pupils complete writing assessments which are comparatively judged using the ‘No More Marking’ process, this provides us with a nationally standardised score, a writing age, and a comparison with other schools’ performances. We also ensure we moderate written pieces within our own school and externally with other primary schools. The impact of the curriculum can be seen through pupils’ national assessment results and children’s books.

Through lesson and pupils’ book monitoring, it is evident that pupils are being well supported to acquire the necessary skills and subject knowledge in order to become established and confident writers and work monitored in books demonstrates that the curriculum is taught at an age-appropriate standard across each year group, with additional opportunities planned to close the gap and for pupils to demonstrate their ability to work at a higher standard. Lesson observations demonstrate that learning is being broken down into smaller steps and modelling supports pupils in the writing process – ensuring that the subject as a whole is regularly being reviewed to ensure learning is being embedded into pupils’ long-term memory.
Pupils’ voice and talking to the children about their learning measures the impact of our English curriculum. Pupils’ voice at Webheath reflects that children are enjoying writing, feel supported and can talk about the subject and curriculum opportunities.

NB- this document stands alongside Webheath’s reading Intent, Implementation and Impact document and is not in isolation.

Year Group English Overviews

Year R English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 1 English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 2 English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 3 English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 4 English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 5 English Curriculum Overview and Skills
Year 6 English Curriculum Overview and Skills