English
Find out more about the Clever Writer approach here
Click on the links below to see our year Group's Writing Curriculum
At Holland House school, all children will be confident, coherent and passionate writers.
Our aim at Holland House School is to promote high standards of language and literacy through the spoken and written word. By using a wide variety of rich and inspiring texts, we want all children to be inspired and excited to write creatively for a range of purposes. Through high quality teaching and learning, children will be encouraged through the teaching of our progressive scheme of Read Write Inc phonics, to spell confidently words that they need to become a Clever Writer. We want all children to build a strong posture in both gross and fine motor skills that will continue to develop a legible handwriting style for them to communicate ideas clearly. Children will leave Holland House School with the ability to write with accuracy and speed. Children will be able to communicate, organise and write their ideas using grammatically correct sentences to enable them to become exceptional writers.
At Holland House, our aim for implementation is to ensure all children regardless of background, ability and additional needs will flourish to become the very best and fulfil their true potential as young writers. We are a Clever Writer school which builds upon the National Curriculum for Writing expectations through a series of carefully small, planned steps.
- Writing begins with a rich vocabulary text shared with children daily.
- Teachers confidently plan and deliver a structured approach to Writing using systematic and logical checklists around skills taught for each year group.
- The Clever Writer structure enables teachers to assess and identify precise steps that each child needs in order to make progress and improve their Writing.
- Staff live mark and use this knowledge to immediately give feedback and support development of every child.
Grammar and punctuation
Through our Clever Writer progressive steps stated in our Writing curriculum overview, the grammar skills needed to support a writing outcome will have been planned for and taught within the English lesson. This ensures that the knowledge and skills taught of a specific grammatical skill is then applied confidently by the children as part of their everyday writing. This detail can be found in our Writing overviews for each year group and matches the National Curriculum expectations and Early Years Curriculum. Children are encouraged to be reflective writers and edit their writing in order to build an awareness of their audience.
Spelling
At Holland House Infant School and Nursery we use the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get children off to a flying start with their English, RWI is a method of learning centred around letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing.
Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who reads challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.
Using RWI, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into comprehending what they read. It also allows them to spell effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into composing what they write.
Here at Holland House Infant and Nursery school, we teach spelling through weekly targeted lessons. Teachers plan to teach spelling rules for their Year groups as well as the common exception words that appear mostly in their writing through a structured spelling lesson. This is detailed in the spelling overview and Writing overviews for Year groups, where staff plan to deliver tricky parts of spellings in small, precise steps. Where possible patterns taught are then linked to the writing outcome and text to enable the children to apply the skills in daily lessons.
Specific spelling lessons take place outside the Read Write Inc lesson, where spelling is also a focus, using specific spelling pattern of the phoneme that has been taught in that lesson. These spellings are sent home weekly so that the phoneme patterns are shared with parents as well as the common exception words the children have been taught.
To ensure progression and success when children move to our feeder Junior school, we plan progression of skills in genres so that we are working together to ensure our children succeed in writing.
Have a look at our progression maps for genres in Fiction and Non-Fiction writing.
We carefully plan expectations for each Year group to achieve throughout the year.
Click on the links below to see our year Group's Writing Checklists
Year One are Clever Writers
Year Two are Clever Writers