Writing at the meon valley federation
English Subject Vision
At Meon Valley Federation, our English curriculum is designed to inspire and equip all pupils with the skills, knowledge, and understanding necessary to become confident communicators, fluent readers, and expressive writers. We believe that a strong foundation in English is crucial for unlocking pupils' potential across the wider curriculum and for preparing them for life beyond school.
Our intent is to:
- Develop Reading Proficiency and Love for Literature: Foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing pupils to a rich and diverse range of texts, authors, and genres. We aim to develop fluent readers who can comprehend and engage with both fiction, non-fiction and poetry enabling them to appreciate language's power and beauty. We place a strong emphasis on phonics to ensure every child becomes a confident reader by the time they leave our schools.
- Encourage Expressive and Purposeful Writing: Equip pupils with the skills to express themselves clearly, creatively, and for different purposes and audiences. Through structured teaching of spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure, we guide pupils to become competent writers who can plan, draft, and edit their work with growing independence and confidence.
- Foster Speaking and Listening Skills: Provide opportunities for pupils to develop their spoken language and listening skills in a range of contexts. We emphasize clear articulation, confident public speaking, and the ability to listen and respond thoughtfully to others. These skills are essential for pupils' personal, social, and academic development.
- Promote Language Rich Environments: Ensure that every classroom is language-rich, where discussion, debate, and vocabulary development are integral to all lessons. By embedding high-quality texts and rich vocabulary across the curriculum, we aim to close the word gap and support all pupils in accessing the wider curriculum.
How do we plan Writing?
Throughout the year children will have the opportunity to learn about the different genres of writing: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. They will have opportunities to write stories, letters, diary entries, instructions, and information leaflets. Each writing unit usually lasts for 2 weeks and is driven by a quality text that has been chosen for its themes, rich language and structure. Exciting activities called ‘hooks’ are planned for the beginning of each unit to encourage enthusiasm about writing and to ensure the writing is relevant and purposeful. A hook could be anything! In the past, we have found a strange egg in the school grounds, stumbled upon a crime scene and created a radio advert for a cleaning service!
We use the following frameworks and models to plan writing opportunities across the Federation for all year groups.
- Early Years Framework and Development Matters
- National Curriculum
- Hampshire Assessment Model
- Hampshire Learning Journey Model
Reception
Key Stage 1
How do we assess writing?
Our assessment for learning ethos across our Federation encourages all children to the best writer they can be and supports them to reflect and improve on their writing. The teachers mark in green pen to show where good examples are and pink pen to highlight areas for improvement, for example common exception words that are incorrect, letter formation or punctuation. The children edit their own writing throughout using a purple pen.
Hampshire Assessment Model
We use the Hampshire Assessment Model. The below links give you an overview of the different writing skills that are taught throughout Year 1 and Year 2.
How do we teach spelling?
Spelling is taught through our Read Write Inc phonics programme and through our writing learning journeys. In phonics, children learn to break down words into individual sounds using “Fred Fingers”
Children are taught that not all words can be spelt using their phonics knowledge and these are called common exception words. We look at these spellings more closely and learning about how to spell them and why they are tricky. The children have access to these spellings on word mats on their tables and are encouraged to use these resources when they are writing to ensure they spell common exception words correctly.
