English
At Richmond, our pedagogy for developing writing, imagination and creativity for our younger children, comes from Greg Botterill’s ‘Drawing Club’. ‘Drawing Club’ is linked to amazing books and gives children freedom, choice and purpose for writing. Children love to come to ‘Drawing Club’ and apply their developing language, phonics and writing skills when writing ‘magic codes’ to make their creative drawings come to life!
Curious Quests, also from Greg Botterill, builds upon the Drawing Club adventures in writing in Year 1 and Year 2, showing children that they CAN write and that their “pen is a magic wand.” “The Curious Quests is an immersive adventure into story, poetry, make-believe and giving children a childhood that brims with endless possibilities to invent, imagine and story dream. The Curious Quests combines short carpet sessions, group work and children exploring open-ended resources such as junk modelling, construction, playdough, role play and being outside.” We maximise opportunities to explore adventurous vocabulary, linked to texts, and all learning is linked to National Curriculum objectives and expectations for English.
Talk for Writing was developed by the author Pie Corbett. It is a fun, creative, yet also rigorous approach to develop writers. Talk for Writing starts with enjoying and sharing stories. Throughout the school, we place a strong emphasis on children reading stories and enjoying a range of literature. Through regular reading, and the exploration of model texts, we want children to build up an extensive and rich vocabulary for use in their own writing.
Talk for Writing starts with enjoying and sharing stories. Children learn to retell a text off by heart with expression and actions. Once a story is learnt, the children are encouraged to adapt it to make it their own, for example by changing the characters or the setting. Finally, at the Invention Stage, pupils write their own text independently.
Please click on the link below to find out more about Talk for Writing in our school;
Richmond Talk for Writing Booklet
Grammar
The two links below outline the grammatical language and objectives children will cover within each year group. The glossary provides definitions and examples of the terminology.
Spelling
Daily discreet phonics lessons take place in EYFS and KS1 , and daily spelling sessions for children in KS2.
Children are taught the spellings 'rules' and 'patterns' outlined in the National Curriculum. Children access a longer, half an hour teaching session on a Monday, where new Spelling learning is introduced. This is then followed by four fifteen-minute sessions throughout the week. We base our sessions around: orthography and phonetic knowledge, etymology (history behind the words) and morphology (how the words are made up of different parts), the meanings of words and how to use them in sentences and a range of multi-sensory games and activities.
It is important to us that the children get the opportunity to explore the patterns and rules themselves. This is to give children the best chance at understanding and remembering the spelling of words, so that they can be applied to their independent writing. Your child will be sent home with details about the rule, and 5 words that link. Children will be tested on these 5 words, and 3-5 other words that link to their focus rule.
The rules and patterns that each year group is taught are taken from the National Curriculum. More details can bee seen in the spelling overview.
Ways to support spelling at home:
- explore what the words mean, and how to use them in sentences
- break the word down into syllables or phonemes
- do sensory activities like writing the words in colours, chalk and in sand
- use letter tiles or magnetic letters to mix up the letters and re-build the words (letter tiles can be made with small bits of paper and a pen)
- games where children can say and write words linked to the rule over and over again are good for memory
.
Overviews
The National Curriculum outlines statutory requirements for; Spoken Language, Reading — Word Recognition and Comprehension, Writing — Transcription, Handwriting, Composition, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation. Each of the links below show which objectives will be covered in each of the areas aforementioned.
Year 3 and 4 English Overview
Year 5 and 6 English Overview
Genres
At Richmond we focus on teaching the different types of writing within imaginative, real purposes often involving real audiences. This helps pupils to appreciate the importance of English to their lives outside school. The documents below show how our English units link to our Cornerstones Imaginative Learning Projects, enabling pupils to use and apply all of their skills and knowledge across a wide range of curriculum areas.
Richmond English Genres from the National Curriculum
Richmond English Policy
Name | |
---|---|
Richmond English Policy.docx | Download |