English

English Rationale

At Anstey, we aim to provide an engaging and dynamic learning environment which nurtures children’s curiosity and development as learners. Our writing curriculum aims to allow children to express themselves creatively through a broad overview of genres and topic-linked writing projects.  

Through our new Writing approach, The Write Stuff, we aim to immerse pupils in all the skills and features they can use within their writing to make it exciting for the reader. We regularly discuss ‘reading as a writer’ and encourage children to think about the impact that their writing is having. Using the ‘Writing Rainbow’, children can identify and use a wide range of features to make their writing exciting and enjoyable to read.

The structure of our Writing learning journeys involve ‘experience days’, which intend to provide children with first-hand experiences that will support their writing, ‘sentence stacking days’, where children focus on sentence-level

writing using high quality features, and an independent writing sequence, where children can apply all they have learned. Learning journeys last around three weeks in order for the children to fully absorb the context and text driving the journey. Children develop their stamina through the amount of writing that is expected of them through each topic and our curriculum is progressive to ensure that they develop the specific skills as they move through the school too.

We value independence in choice and our writing curriculum allows children to make these important decisions about their writing. Children are provided with a range of stimuli and contexts for writing that will motivate them to be the best writer they can be. In addition, reading high quality texts is incredibly important to us at Anstey and we always emphasise the link between reading and writing to children. Our writing curriculum is underpinned by high quality texts, ensuring that children have models for writing that they can use to support them.

Writing lessons are differentiated to support children of all abilities and needs. We promote an inclusive environment which fosters all children’s participation regardless of their understanding of the elements of writing. All children can be writers, and this expectation is communicated by all of our staff.