Writing at Kingshill Church School
Intent
At Kingshill Church School our vision of ‘Learning, Community and Friendship’ frames our English curriculum.
Kingshill Church School offers an exciting, relevant, broad and balanced English curriculum that fosters and promotes a love of reading and writing.
Through our English curriculum, personal development and our class topics, the pupils are inspired to read for pleasure and to gather information, and to write for a purpose and for an audience.
We aim to ensure that all children are able to:
• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• be competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate
We prioritise reading and writing across the curriculum so that every child can unlock learning across the curriculum and be ‘the best version of themselves’.
We aim to promote a love of the spoken word, reading and storytelling in order to inspire curiosity, wonder and imagination. Through writing, children can find and express their unique voice, as well as enhance and develop their critical thinking skills.
Our English curriculum enables the children to have the opportunity to grow culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
Through reading, children develop empathy and care for one another. Reading allows us to see and understand the world through the eyes of others.
Writing enables us to present our inner thoughts and feelings to the wider community and the world beyond. In doing so, children become active, collaborative and responsible citizens, who will be better equipped to be an active part of their community and the wider world.
Throughout our lessons, children are given the opportunity to talk and listen, developing a shared connection to one another, the local community and the beyond. By promoting a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about reading and writing, the children will acquire the skills needed to succeed in the next stage of their life and beyond.
At Kingshill Church School we are striving to equip all children with the tools required to read and write at a level that allows success across all areas of the curriculum and life. Through the acquisition of these skills, we hope to instil a love of reading and writing that is formed in the earliest stages of our early years provision, nurtured and developed through KS1 and 2 and then continues to flourish as the children transition into KS3 and beyond.
Following a progressive curriculum in both reading and writing, children are targeted to meet the age-related expectations for their year group.
Our English curriculum is based on the National Curriculum objectives and follows a sequential and progressive structure which allows children to secure a fundamental understanding of the English language (in both written and spoken form).
Our progressions detail the expected transcription (spelling and handwriting) skills and the writing composition, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation skills, knowledge and understanding. By following a systematic approach to the purpose of the writing and its associated features and formalities we are able to expose children to a range of writing styles each year.
Our progressions have also been developed to provide a balance of robust transcription skills, well rounded composition skills, a focus on vocabulary development, spelling, punctuation and grammatical knowledge. This approach also enables us to support the children to reactivate and build on their knowledge, skills and understanding thereby supporting children to know and remember more.
What does this look like in practice?
The approach to the implementation is to provide a level of predictability in format so that children feel secure and confident and so that the cognitive load enables strong progress.
In practice this will be a unit of work based on a rich text which is practised and rehearsed orally – building key knowledge of rhythm, patterns and prosody in language. This text is then unpicked and the meaning or words and the reasons for their choice are explored. Key features of the composition are then taught and applied.
The text is innovated and the children create their ‘own version’ which encompasses the structure and key learning. We find that this approach ensures the children have rich ideas they wish to write about as well as developing the knowledge, skills and understanding to produce their own pieces of writing. This approach is based on the Talk for Writing approach and is based on Talk for Writing texts, many of which have adapted to suit our writing progressions.
The implementation of our writing curriculum also provides sessions which enable component tasks to be practiced and mastered. This is crucial to our learner’s developing accuracy and automaticity as well as confidence. The time spent on these tasks is very effective as the load on the working memory is reduced as the children are not focussed on a larger number of simultaneous aspects.
Daily transcription (Writing for Accuracy -WFA), which sits alongside the writing process described above, enables children to practice and apply their transcriptional knowledge. This session focusses in on spelling patterns, grammar patterns, common exception words and punctuation used in a range of sentences. This approach also supports the development of agency in editing and checking.
Handwriting sessions enable children to develop consistent letter formation and letter joins which enables the children to develop a flow in their writing. This in turn supports them to be able to write their composition with greater ease.
Spelling is also taught systematically and reinforced by the writing for accuracy sessions. For more details on spelling please scroll down to the spelling section of this page.
Here are the links to our curriculum progressions for writing:
Kingshill-Church-School-Overview-of-Writing-Progression-2024-2025
Kingshill Church School Overview of Writing Progression 2023 24
This link maps out key aspects taught in each year group:
Kingshill Church School Writing Progression by Year Group and Strand 2024 to 2025
These links map out how our coverage and teaching is mapped out for our mixed year group classes.
Kingshill-Church-School-Writing-Progression-by-Cohort-2024-2025
Kingshill Church School Writing Progression by Cohort 2023-2024
These objectives are then mapped across the year and through the selected texts:
Whole-School-Overview-of-Texts-for-Writing-2024-2025
Whole School Overview of Texts for Writing 2023 2024
A communicator disciplinary skills
Spelling:
At Kingshill Church school we use ‘Spelling Shed’ for the Teaching and Learning of Spelling across Key Stage 2 (Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6) and in Year 2 when pupils have secured their Phonics Teaching and Learning.
You and your child will also be able to access what Spelling Shed has to offer at home too.
Click on this link to explore Spelling Shed and what it has to offer both at school and at home.
The teaching of spelling at Kingshill Church School, using Spelling Shed as its core, follows teaching:
Parental Guides:
The documents below will provide assistance with the language used in school which your child is familiar with
Reading at Kingshill
Kingshill -Church-School-Reading-Curriculum-Progression-Map
Kingshill Church school reading offer
A love of reading is encouraged by an ever-increasing range of provision such as:
- Daily class text shared by teacher.
- Regular access to the school library for pupils
- Daily teaching of reading lessons.
- Focus authors for each half term to expose children to 6 new authors each year.
- Opportunities to read aloud and independently each day.
- 1:1 reading opportunities with an adult
- Completion of Accelerated Reader quizzes when books are completed.
- Inviting and well-stocked book corners in every classroom
Children are exposed to a wide range of high-quality texts throughout the school. In the Early Years and KS1 this is supported by our Unlocking Letters and Sounds texts, which are fully phonically decodable alongside, the whole class sharing of popular children’s books to promote reading for pleasure. These books are read to the children regularly so that they become familiar, and the language and vocabulary begins to be embedded in the children’s own language patterns.
In KS2 (or when ready) children access reading through Accelerated Reader which we use as a diagnostic tool for children’s reading progress and to encourage children to read a wide range of texts which are well matched to their next steps.
Our approach to reading in Early Years and KS1 is through the Unlocking Letters and Sounds guided reading scheme, which supports the children with reading aloud, reading to a partner, reading in their head and answering questions on the texts.
In KS2 we use quality texts from Cracking Comprehension, Literacy Shed and class readers. We structure our teaching to ensure the children receive a balance of skills teaching from retrieval to inference to summarising. No matter where the text is from, there is a clear and deliberate focus on understanding word meaning and how this enables the unlocking of the text meaning.
We also draw upon the ‘Reading House’, the ‘Reading Rope’ and other research-based evidence and strategies to help us ensure our teaching is pitched correctly and we are exposing the children to all of the strands necessary to become a successful, fluent readers. As we understand the way in which reading unlocks wider learning, these are a core focus of staff continuing professional development.
