At Guillemont, through reading and listening to a range of rich, diverse texts, children develop in a range of ways: culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. These texts and other experiences (such as trips and outdoor learning) inspire our children to write creatively in a variety of ways. Children at our school will be able to communicate clearly and confidently, and be able to debate and discuss their ideas with others. Our children will build their knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar at our school and be able to apply it in their writing, and will leave the school with neat and fluent handwriting. The children’s lessons will follow an inclusive learning journey that will make writing exciting and allow them to express themselves in creative and imaginative ways.
At Guillemont, our teaching of English is built upon the foundations of the National Curriculum; our teachers ensure that our curriculum is enhanced and extended with additional skills and knowledge as and when appropriate or necessary for our children. English writing lessons take place every day and are supplemented by additional daily guided reading, and 1.5 hours of spelling lessons a week. English learning journeys make clear to the children what they are learning and the outcome they will achieve: these follow the HIAS stimulate and generate; capture sift and sort and create refine and evaluate model. The English lead teacher keeps up-to-date with developments in the subject by regularly attending the HIAS run district core provision meetings as well as the annual English conference: information from these sessions in cascaded to staff through workshops. HIAS advisers are invited into school on INSET days to provide training for teachers and LSAs when a need arises.
Writing is inspired by and planned around stimuli, which are selected by teachers, to engage their pupils. These include a combination of high quality texts, project links or stimulating experiences. Through our English lessons our children are able to practise their word and sentence skills, then plan, edit, revise and evaluate their writing. We actively look for opportunities for children to apply their writing skills across the curriculum.
Our school has a clear focus on the development of speech and language. We have implemented tiered vocabulary development throughout the curriculum and use working walls, visual prompts (WIDGET), oral rehearsal of sentences and pre teach vocabulary. This helps children to make links and develop their speaking and listening as well as their writing across the curriculum. Children are also given opportunities to debate and discuss their ideas in class to support their development of communication.
Grammar is mainly taught in context: it is identified in the texts we use and is modelled though live and shared writing. We base our progression in punctuation and grammar on the Hampshire Assessment Model (HAM) to ensure full coverage.
We teach fluent and legible handwriting by using a cursive script but want children to develop their own neat, joined handwriting choosing when to join letters. Teachers demonstrate cursive handwriting and ‘Golden Pens’ are awarded to children in assemblies to reward consistently good handwriting. Where necessary OT and handwriting groups take place when problems are identified.
The No-Nonsense spelling scheme is used as the basis of our spelling teaching, this ensures coverage of the skills and teachers supplement it with other resources. Children are taught spelling for 30 mins, three times a week. On entering our school, children in year 3 are assessed and where necessary spelling provisions and catch up groups are established to help those who require more support.
At Guillemont Junior School we can judge the success of our writing curriculum in the following ways:
Our rich curriculum must ensure that our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond our school and the wider world.
We will be holding morning tours for prospective parents on Monnday 28th September and Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd October 7th October (9am – 12pm).
