Writing

Our English Curriculum: A Bespoke Journey in Writing

At our school, we are proud to offer a bespoke English curriculum, uniquely designed by our staff to take pupils on a progressive journey from Year 1 to Year 6. Our curriculum is built to foster a love of language and develop confident, skilled, and creative writers through our broad and varied text types.

Our Teaching Approach

Our English lessons are founded on a clear and effective 'I do, We Do, You Do' model. This approach ensures that pupils are fully supported before moving to independence:

I Do: The teacher models the new skill or writing technique explicitly.

We Do: The class and teacher practise the skill together, with guided support.

You Do: Pupils apply the skill independently in their own work.

This methodology is applied across all our writing units. Each fiction and non-fiction unit lasts for two weeks, with poetry units lasting for one week.

Every unit is carefully structured to build skills sequentially. A typical unit includes:

Skills-Based Lessons: Dedicated lessons focusing on the specific grammar, punctuation, or stylistic features required for the final piece.

Text Interrogation: Pupils "read as writers," analysing a high-quality model text to understand its features and impact.

Writing Process: A structured writing journey that includes shared writing (as a class), guided writing (in small groups), and a final independent write where pupils apply all the skills they have learned.

Core Components of Our Curriculum

1. Text-Based Writing: Our curriculum is driven by high-quality texts that inspire and engage our pupils. From Year 1, children explore traditional tales and picture books, learning to write narratives, reports, and instructions. As they move through the school, they engage with a rich variety of fiction and non-fiction genres, using inspiring books like The Boy Who Grew Dragons in Year 3, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane in Year 4, and Windrush Child in Year 6 to produce biographies, diary entries, persuasive letters, and detailed reports.

2. Poetry: Poetry is a key part of our curriculum, with a dedicated one-week block each half-term. This allows pupils to immerse themselves in a specific poetic style. The curriculum is designed to build in complexity, moving from foundational forms like nursery rhymes, acrostics, and shape poems in Key Stage 1, to more complex forms like narrative poetry, ballads, and spoken word in Key Stage 2.

3. Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar (SPAG): We teach SPAG through a dual approach. In addition to being integrated into every English unit, pupils receive one discrete SPAG lesson each week. This dedicated time allows for the explicit teaching and reinforcement of key grammatical concepts and punctuation rules, ensuring pupils develop a strong technical foundation for their writing.

A Clear Progression of Skills

Our bespoke curriculum ensures that skills are not just taught but are revisited and built upon year after year. Our approach to figurative language is a clear example of this progression:

Year 3: Pupils are introduced to foundational techniques like similes, alliteration, and onomatopoeia.

Year 4: They develop their use of similes and are introduced to metaphors and personification.

Year 5: Pupils extend their understanding of metaphors and personification and begin to use hyperbole for effect.

Year 6: Pupils work towards mastering a wide range of figurative language, analysing its impact and exploring idioms and symbolism.

This structured, cumulative approach ensures that by the time our pupils leave in Year 6, they are well-equipped with the diverse skills and knowledge needed to be articulate and effective communicators, ready for the challenges of secondary school and beyond.

We have recently introduced the Kinetic Letters Handwriting Programme at King Charles. For more information please click the link here.