Intent

Puddletown First school believes that developing strong English skills is essential for progress across the curriculum and in preparation for adult life. It is our intention that pupils acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners and writers. We strive to provide exciting writing opportunities and experiences that engage and enhance all pupils. We ensure every child masters the skills of punctuation, sentence structure, transcription, spelling and redrafting so that they are able to communicate effectively through a range of text types. Our aim is that children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform or instruct and that where possible, this can be embedded within text and/or linked to a curriculum area.

Implementation

 We teach writing following the Literacy tree scheme. The Literacy tree scheme is a complete, book-based approach which places high quality texts at its core. Children are immersed in each book which creates strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for their written work. As a whole school approach children will encounter a wide range of significant authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The Literacy Tree scheme provides complete coverage of the National curriculum through carefully planned sequences of lessons. The Literacy Tree texts are mapped out to ensure progress, with skills and outcomes revisited to practise and consolidate learning.

Impact

As a school, we measure the impact of our writing curriculum through:

• Ensuring that the National Curriculum requirements are met in each year group.
• Using summative assessment termly to measure children’s understanding, progress and identify their next steps
• Regular moderation both internally and externally to support teacher judgements.
• Feedback of children’s work in books, which can be both verbal or written.
• Monitoring of children’s progress from year to year ensuring our children are making good progress from their starting points.
• Pupils are ready for their transfer to Middle school.
• Pupils leave Puddletown with a love of reading and writing.