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Curriculum

Writing, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

Our Writing, Grammar and Spelling coordinator is: Mrs L Poole

Our writing curriculum at Towngate:

At Towngate Primary Academy, our writing curriculum has been carefully designed with high quality literature at the core. We follow a book-led curriculum across our classes, which enables children to be exposed to an array of books which are used as a vehicle throughout the writing process.

The sequence of lessons in place provide rich opportunities for our children to become immersed in the work of many different authors: pupils are equipped with the tools to read and comprehend, discuss and analyse and plan their own written pieces, using multiple models to gain a full understanding of the writing process. Children are taught the grammatical skills and knowledge required in order to draft, edit and improve their independent writing and are able to write for varied audience and purpose throughout their journey at Towngate.

Our writing curriculum places high importance on equipping the children of Towngate with the knowledge, confidence, vocabulary and skills to become effective communicators of the future.

Early Writing
  • Familiar texts used as a stimulus for retelling, writing and developing pupils’ imaginations.
  • Daily activities to develop gross motor and fine motor skills.
  • Daily activities to strengthen wrists, hands and fingers e.g. dough disco, threading beads,.
  • Opportunities to make marks in the continuous provision both indoors and outdoors.
  • Daily handwriting sessions in Reception.
  • Opportunities to write in daily phonics lessons to apply the skill of segmenting to spell.
  • Writing is for a purpose with a clear audience: pupils are encouraged to write from first hand experiences, writing tasks are set to complete in continuous provision and focused, small group work allows for adults to model accurate letter formation and holding a sentence.
  • Oracy is central to our work in the Early Years: retelling in small world, using rhyme and song and repeated reads.
Key Stage One
  • Core text used to stimulate writing.
  • Daily phonics sessions including ‘hold a sentence’.
  • Daily handwriting lessons.
  • Daily English sessions: comprehension of a text, grammar, rehearsing and writing dictated sentences, sentence building, independent writing.
  • An unwavering focus on embedding the foundations of a simple sentence, punctuated accurately.
Key Stage Two
  • Core text used to stimulate writing.
  • Daily handwriting lessons.
  • Daily English sessions: comprehension of a text, grammar, unpicking multiple models to understand the audience and purpose of the piece, planning – a focus on language development and sentence models, independent writing, editing and redrafting.
  • Opportunities to publish work through showcase displays around school.
Handwriting
  • We follow the Kinetic Letters approach to handwriting at Towngate.
  • Each class follows the four threads to develop automaticity in handwriting.
  • Focus is placed on ensuring pupils whole body strength is developed to ensure they are ready to write.
  • Activities are planned to support pupils’ manipulation and dexterity.
  • Holding a pencil, correct seated position and various writing positions are taught.
  • Kinetic Letters is taught for 15 minutes daily.
Spellings
  • After pupils complete their phonics programme (Y2), a phonetic approach to spellings is in place.
  • Pupils are quizzed weekly on spellings that have been grouped according to sound.
  • Common exception words form part of weekly quizzing.
  • Pupils have access to resources in classrooms to support their independent spelling choices.
Progression in Writing, Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation Download Icon