Our subject lead for English is Mrs L Bunney.  

The aims of our English curriculum taken from the National Curriculum

The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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
• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

Intent

At Russell Lower School, we believe that every child is a writer. 

Our intent is to build confident, knowledgeable, and purposeful writers by reducing cognitive overload through ensuring writing is taught progressively, systematically, and meaningfully. We aim to equip pupils with the tools, vocabulary, and structures they need to communicate clearly, creatively, and effectively for a range of audiences and purposes.

We use our core values—Challenge, Enjoy, Respect, and Succeed—to shape our writing journey:

• Challenge: We provide high expectations, deep models, and rich vocabulary to stretch all writers.
• Enjoy: We foster a love of storytelling, creativity, and purposeful writing across the curriculum.
• Respect: We value every child’s voice and promote respectful collaboration and feedback.
• Succeed: We equip children with the knowledge and tools they need to become independent, successful writers.

Through recent training and development teaching staff understand that to become effective writers, pupils need:

• A rich oral language environment to support vocabulary and sentence development.
• A secure foundation in spelling, handwriting, grammar, and punctuation.
• Background knowledge of the topic they’re writing about.
• Familiarity with the structure, purpose, and features of different text types.
• The ability to plan, draft, edit, and evaluate their writing.

There is also shared understanding that good writing should demonstrate:

• Clear purpose, audience, and form.
• Appropriate structure and organisation.
• Accurate and ambitious vocabulary choices.
• Correct grammar and punctuation (appropriate to age).
• Evidence of drafting and improving, showing pride and ownership.

By the end of Russell Lower School, we intend for pupil's to be able to:

• Write with increasing independence, accuracy, and flair.
• Understand how to adapt their writing for different audiences and purposes.
• Take pride in crafting, revising, and improving their work.
• View themselves as capable, thoughtful, and expressive writers.

Implementation

Our writing principles include the following:

1. Reducing Cognitive Load

• Oracy and language is a key focus with staff modelling the use of higher level vocabulary within their own speech and supporting pupils to do the same. 
• Oral rehearsal, boxing up grids and shared writing support all pupils by reducing overload, allowing pupils to internalise language patterns before writing independently.
• Writing is carefully scaffolded, separating the demands of idea generation, transcription, grammar, and composition.
• Transcriptional skills (spelling, punctuation, handwriting) are taught discretely and applied gradually in context. 
• Scaffolds (e.g. sentence stems, structure strips, model texts, vocabulary banks) are used to enable content to be the focus and to avoid overwhelming working memory.
• Writing is broken into manageable, age appropriate, stages: imitation, innovation, and independent application, ensuring children are not overwhelmed.
  

2. Building Knowledge of the Topic

• Writing tasks are closely linked to the wider curriculum or high-quality texts to ensure pupils have something meaningful to write about, whilst maintaining the understanding that the craft of writing should be developed in writing lessons and then applied in other subjects, providing opportunity to apply learning in a meaningful context.
• Before writing, pupils are immersed in rich content, discussion, and vocabulary so they develop strong background knowledge. Subject specific vocabulary is embedded across the curriculum with key vocabulary displayed and discussed.
• High-quality model texts are used to demonstrate language, structure, and purpose.

3. Developing Discourse Knowledge

• Pupils are explicitly taught the language features, structures, and purposes of a range of text types (narrative, explanation, persuasion, etc.).
• Through repeated exposure and practice, children internalise genre features, sentence patterns, and cohesive devices.
• Talk for Writing strategies, drama, and shared writing are used to develop fluency in oral and written expression 

4. Spiral Curriculum with Clear Sequence & Progression

• Writing knowledge and skills are revisited and built upon year after year. For example, sentence construction begins with coordination and expands to subordination and varied clause structures.
• Each year, pupils consolidate and extend their understanding of various genres with increasing independence and complexity, allowing children to build on prior learning.
  
• Key grammar, punctuation and vocabulary knowledge develop cumulatively and are applied in increasingly independent writing.
  
• Marking is rigorous in English lessons as it is across the curriculum. We believe in and carry out 'in the moment' marking so that children receive instant verbal feedback, both in terms of success (green) and areas to improve/develop further (orange), which they can then use to progress their writing to the next stage. 

Through recent training (2024-2026) staff understand that the HfL Writing Journey supports pupils in understanding and managing the full writing process. This includes:

1. Generating ideas – building background knowledge, making connections.

2. Planning – organising and structuring ideas before writing.

3. Drafting – getting ideas onto the page fluently.

4. Evaluating & editing – improving through focused revision.

5. Publishing or presenting – taking pride in completed work

All of the above is planned through and supported by our newly devised year group overviews and writing unit plans. 

To further enhance our writing curriculum, we invite in authors from the local and wider community such Tom Palmer, Peter Laws and Keith Hatton to ensure the pupils are learning from masters of their trade.

Impact

Through the teaching of writing we aim for the children to enjoy writing across a range of genres, that they can write for a range of purposes and audiences and become confident and effective communicators.

By encouraging and equipping our children with the right skills to be inquisitive and passionate about the written word, they amass a rich and varied vocabulary that they can use across the curriculum. All children are familiar with the word of the week and are eager to use it in their written work. 

As all aspects of English are an integral part of the wider curriculum, cross curricular writing standards have improved and skills taught in the English lesson are transferred to others subjects, showing a consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific grammar, punctuation and grammatical concepts. 

In order to measure the impact of our writing we use a range of formative and summative assessment in all lessons such as:

• Questioning

• Pupil, parent, staff voice/questionnaires

• Observations/learning walks/drop ins

• Analysis of our assessment tool linked to milestone documents/National Curriculum for each year

Assessment information is collected frequently and analysed as part of our monitoring of teaching and learning cycle. This process provides an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education in writing as well as indicating areas for development. 

Further to this there are regular moderation sessions with other schools and the local Middle School as well as staff development meetings dedicated to both training and also moderation in order to continually improve practice. 

Children at Russell Lower School are proud of their work but most importantly by the time our children leave us at the end of year 4 they have developed a love of writing and are well equipped for the rest of their education. 

Academic outcomes and impact:

For this year we are aware of the following outcomes for writing and reading.

2025 Writing ARE+%

Foundation Stage    83%

Year 1                     85%

Year 2                    85%

Year 3                    79%

Year 4                    85%

The average Writing ARE+ for all year groups is 83% showing that we consistenty acheive high standards.