English - Writing and Grammar

Vision

At Nar Valley, we believe that literacy and communication are key life skills. It provides children a voice to share their ideas with the world.  Through our English curriculum, we to provide children with the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge that will enable them to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language, thus enabling them to play a full part in society. We want children to enjoy and appreciate literature and its rich variety and to learn to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. We foster an enjoyment and love of writing. 

Aims 

At Nar Valley we believe there are several integral parts to the foundation of successful writing: 

• A real desire to communicate 
• Reading widely to develop understanding and appreciation of a variety of genres and authors
• A rich vocabulary to drawn upon
• The understanding of how grammatical structures, syntax and vocabulary choices can be used to have an effect upon the reader.

In our Federation, we identified the real desire and need for our school communities to develop a rich vocabulary, broaden their cultural understanding, to provide experiences of diversity, and to develop their ability to present and speak clearly about themselves and their learning.

How will we achieve this? 

Our writing curriculum is underpinned by the wide variety of texts the children are exposed to in their daily reading lessons to give them a diverse and wide-ranging vocabulary and appreciation of the diversity of styles and genres that authors make. 

We believe that pupils should have a strong understanding of the ideas which they wish to communicate. In the EYFS and Year 1, writing is closely linked to concrete experiences through play and family and friends, and the stories read in daily learning. 

In Years 2 to 6, writing where possible is cross-curricular linked and provides pupils with the background understanding, rich vocabulary and need to communicate. Writing may be linked with a variety of curriculum areas including history, science and geography amongst others. 

We believe that pupils must be provided with an understanding of the purpose of a particular genre or text type, as well as the intended audience, in order to help them make effective language, grammar and syntax choices accordingly. 

What does this look like? 

Pupils are taught writing daily. Writing units are planned to enable children to write a specific genre or text type for a particular audience or purpose. Each writing sequence contains the three phases of successful writing: immerse, model and enable.

In immerse, children are exposed to quality model texts or WAGOLLs. They  have the chance to explore the text and read ‘as a writer’. They use features of talk for writing to help them engage with, read and re-tell the exemplar text. They look at the effect the author’s language choices have had upon the reader by using their reading skills of retrieval, inference and prediction. They will be immersed in a world of language and rich vocabulary.  Pupils are provided with multi-sensory stimuli or experiences in order to help them engage with the text and purpose.  They will create writers ‘toolkits’ to achieving specific effects such as suspense, maintaining interest or creating imagery. 

In model, children have the chance to explore how the author has created particular effects upon the reader and the authorial choices they made in order to do this. They will use the ‘writer's toolkits’ to help them understand creation of a particular genre. They are directed to the grammatical features and syntax the author has chosen and have opportunities to use these features themselves in short burst pieces of writing. They have the opportunity to play and create with the vocabulary and structures used in the exemplar texts.  As pupils move up through key stage 2, they are shown how different authors create similar effects and make choices as to how they wish to do this in their own writing. 

In enable, children will have the chance to use the language, toolkits and grammar they have explored in order to create their own piece of writing of the same genre or text type. They will have the chance to plan, draft and edit their writing based on the effect they wish to create. They finally have the opportunity to ‘showcase’ their learning by making their own creative choices and applying the skills taught in the previous two phases. 

Spirituality in our Curriculum

At the Nar Valley we understand writing is a tool by which we can communicate and understand each other in order to help us make sense of our lives and the world around us. We develop our sense of spirituality by learning to appreciate the beauty of language, and learning how we can create art through using words and our imaginations. We make sense of our lives by writing for a real purpose and audience.