Rose Hill Primary School

‘English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society.  A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to
speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through
their reading and listening, others can communicate with them.’
(Primary National Curriculum, 2014)

The principal focus of writing at Rose Hill is to extend children’s knowledge of different kinds of writing, across a range of purposes, ensuring that pupils extend their understanding of grammatical features. This should help children develop a fluent style of writing.

In order to do this we teach the National Curriculum Programme of study which covers

• Transcription (spelling and handwriting)
• Composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing).

Spelling rules and patterns are taught discreetly across the school. In EYFS, spelling is taught as part of phonics.  In KS1, phonics lessons continue and spelling is explicitly taught in line with year group expectations. This continues into KS2. Spelling Shed supports the teaching of spelling.

Handwriting is also taught explicitly across the school starting with print and moving to a cursive script. Letter join is used to support the teaching of cursive script.

We follow The Literacy Company’s ‘Pathways to Write’ from EYFS to Year 6.  Children learn about the purpose, structure and language features of a variety of writing genres.  The teaching of writing is grounded in a rich experience of reading and reflecting on quality written texts. When appropriate, cross-curricular links are made.

Children are given regular opportunities for telling, retelling and editing texts as part of the writing process.  Extended writing opportunities (mini writes) are regularly planned for across the curriculum.  We use colourful semantics to support sentence structure and the understanding of different word types (verbs, nouns etc).