Spelling-

Pupils are taught how to spell the words they need when writing independently. Through phonics lessons, pupils learn what letter or groups of letters to use to write the sounds (phonemes) they can hear in the word they want to write. Initially, they will learn one way to write the sound but will then learn other alternatives as they progress through Key Stage 1. As they learn these alternatives they will also begin to explore spelling patterns and rules, including prefixes and suffixes.

Some words that children will need to write do not ‘sound out’ easily and these are taught as ‘common exception words’ and should be learnt as a whole word (a specific list for Y1, Y2, Y3 &4 and Y5&6).

The use of apostrophes in spelling and irregular spellings are explored and pupils are also taught dictionary skills. Once a pupil has been taught theses 'common exceptions words' they will be expected to spell them correctly in their own writing or in dictations given by the teacher.

Handwriting-

Children form lower case and capital letters (and digits) accurately, starting and finishing in the correct place. Letters should be of the appropriate size, especially in relationship to each other and there should be spaces between words.

As they progress through to Key Stage 2 children are taught when and how to join letters to produce fluent, legible, cursive script using ink.

Pupils plan what they are going to write and sequence sentences together to form a text. They check what they have written makes sense and have the resilience to edit their work to improve the quality of the sentences. These skills will be transferred across the curriculum.

Pupils write for a range of purposes and develop stamina for longer pieces of writing as they progress through the school. Most writing is taught using the Talk4Writing approach which encourages the children to analyse a model text to identify the features in order to develop an understanding of a variety of different genres.

Older pupils will redraft in order to make improvements and will use more complex sentence structures, paragraphing and richer vocabulary. They will have an increased awareness of the purpose of their writing and write with precision and cohesion.

They read and discuss what they have written with the teacher and their peers.

In their writing, pupils will use vocabulary, grammar and punctuation as prescribed for each year group in the Programme of Study for English (Appendix 2).

They will use punctuation to mark the end of sentences and use capital letters for the start of sentences, the pronoun I and for proper nouns. They will progress to using apostrophes for omission and possession, commas for lists, speech punctuation, commas to indicate clause boundaries, colons, semi colons, brackets, hyphens and ellipses.

When pupils write they show past and present tense correctly and consistently and they use the correct verb noun agreement.

They understand that there are different kinds of sentences. They add complexity to the structure of sentences, using conjunctions to show co-ordination and subordination. They vary sentence structure to achieve specific purposes.

Pupils learn to use the correct terminology for the grammar and punctuation that they are using and write using Standard English.