'After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world' – Phillip Pullman

English ~ Writing

At Mount Hawke Academy our aim is that every child, by the time they leave us, can write in a manner which is clear, grammatically correct and engaging. As writing is a key life skill, we promote daily writing opportunities so that children can successfully write for a range of audiences and purposes.

The children’s enjoyment of writing will shine in their bold vocabulary choices, careful presentation and clear understanding of what they are writing about. Additionally, they will use precise grammatical terminology to discuss and learn from the works of notable authors and to explain their own writing choices. Their resulting skills, knowledge and passion for writing will lead to success in further education, employment and personal life endeavours.    

How We Teach Writing

At Mount Hawke Academy, we teach writing using a variety of strategies to inspire our children's work. We take many principles from the Talk for Writing philosophy, as laid out by Pie Corbett, and combine these with other techniques and ideas.  Children use drama and text-interrogation techniques, as well as spending time unpicking the technical features of the text type and investigating language and structure, using excellent written models. With all of these tools and techniques at their disposal, children are able to use high-level, quality literacy texts to inspire high quality writing.

Our children are provided with opportunities to craft a piece of writing over a number of days.  This helps children build their writing stamina, implement the aspects of the writing journey and this gives them sufficient time to create a quality piece.

Our children are encouraged to edit and redraft their work, using a range of tools to support them in their work. We use a range of peer, teacher and self-marking where children use structured marking ladders and success criteria to assess their work. 

Assessment is both formative and summative, with children being given a combination of written and verbal feedback to inform their improvements and next steps. Teachers will assess children's writing against the objectives of the National Curriculum and use these to inform their planning for each written topic.

All aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum at Mount Hawke Academy, and we expect knowledge and skills taught explicitly in English lessons to transfer into other subjects, so improving cross curricular writing standards and consolidating and deepening skills.    

Spelling

From Year Two on, we teach spelling using the Grammasaurus approach, with a strong focus on helping children understand the etymology (where words come from) and morphology (how words are structured). Spelling is taught discretely through the week. The words introduced each week are carefully linked to the current writing units, giving pupils meaningful opportunities to apply their new spelling knowledge in context.

Grammar

Our children experience whole-class daily grammar sessions in-line with the National Curriculum during the first half of the autumn term, based on The Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar.  These lessons focus on developing children’s understanding of sentence structure, teaching them how to accurately use punctuation and how to build increasingly complex sentences over time. This structured, systematic approach establishes strong foundations at the start of the year and is then reinforced throughout the remaining terms, with regular practice embedded within writing lessons.

Please click on the links below to find out what we cover in our English curriculum in the different year groups.  These are taken from the English Programmes of Study from The National Curriculum 2014.

Handwriting

Handwriting is part of our daily lives.  Time devoted to the teaching and learning of letter formation in the early years pays off as legible writing that can be produced comfortably, at speed and with little conscious effort allows children to attend to the higher-level aspects of writing composition and content.   It is also a movement skill and one which is best taught directly by demonstration, explanation and rehearsal.  We make sure that our children have lots of opportunities to develop their core strength, so supporting the development of gross, then fine, motor skills.  The principal aim is that handwriting becomes an automatic process, which frees pupils to focus on the content of their writing.

Our handwriting scheme is from Little Wandle in the earlier years of school, and then we move onto ‘Penpals’, following this to teach handwriting in a structured way.

English - Oracy

High-quality classroom talk is essential to pupils’ thinking and learning. It is also linked to improvements in reading and writing, and overall attainment (National Literacy Trust).

At Mount Hawke Academy we aim to provide our children with the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching our children to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. Through a high-quality oracy education, pupils learn through talk and to talk. This is when they develop and deepen their subject knowledge and understanding through talk in the classroom.  These oracy opportunities are planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured to enable our children to learn the skills needed to talk and listen effectively.