English

At St Mary's, our belief is that children and staff should be engaged through an English curriculum that enables them to develop their writing alongside their reading. We passionately believe that reading is the foundation that good writing is built upon and our approach to writing is delivered through age appropriate texts and stories across all Key Stages. In order to help build our pupil’s understanding we use the ‘Learn it, Try it, Publish it ’ approach:

• During the ‘Learn it’ stage, we ponder and predict what might happen in the story; through text marking, we look for word sentence and organisational features, as well as collect high quality vocabulary from the text which the children can magpie. The children play an active part in deconstructing the text and gathering content for writing. Alongside this, we examine and think about the audience and purpose of a text, helping us to make choices about the form our writing will take in later stages.

• In the ‘Try it’ stage of our learning, we use the collected vocabulary and model it into sentences through shared writing. We also develop ideas by manipulating sentence structures, constructing paragraphs and using higher-level punctuation. Using this knowledge, our children are encouraged to independently create written pieces.

• Finally, in the ‘Publish it’ stage of their learning, the children self and peer assess written work to identify areas that could benefit from editing using the building blocks already provided in the earlier stages. Independence and creativity are celebrated during this stage and children are encouraged to take pride in their work through producing a final published piece.

Each stage of the process (Learn it, Try it, Publish it) is designed to support the children initially; slowly removing the support, to enable the children to demonstrate independence and find their own ‘voice’ in their narrative.

Through Talk 4 Writing (EYFS, Year 1, and Year 2) and Novel Studies (Key Stage 2) the children at St Mary’s are able to flourish in writing whilst developing their love of reading.

The impact of our approach is that over recent years, our end of year writing and reading results have shown an increase in the number of children achieving ARE and GD. More importantly, our children are more excited and engaged to become better writers through a curriculum which further strengthens a passion in reading.

EYFS and Key Stage 1

Children develop their writing skills through a Talk 4 Writing approach. Through a story or book, the children's writing will develop through 3 structured stages:

Key Stage 2

As the children move into Key Stage 2, they will continue to build upon the skills they have developed using Talk 4 Writing through a Novel Studies approach. Through a range of high quality texts, children will read frequently as a class, within a group and on an individual basis; enabling numerous opportunities for them to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. At St Mary’s, we are passionate about fostering a love of reading. The books selected help inspire and engage our writers, whilst at the same time, help develop the children as readers at school and at home. The class novel underpins all our teaching of English at school, with grammar, punctuation, spelling and comprehension delivered in a context familiar to the children.

 The novels studied are: