Broomfields Junior School

English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them...pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually...

All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.”

National Curriculum for English (September 2014)

At Broomfields Junior School, we believe that reading, writing and communication are at the centre of learning. We aim is to equip our children with these skills so that they can use them confidently and effectively, not only during their time at Broomfields, but also into their future.

Continuing the work from The Cobbs Infant School, we actively promote discussion and encourage children to elaborate on their ideas and explain them to others. Our goal is for our children to have a strong command of the spoken word and be able to communicate confidently and successfully with others.

We greatly value the importance of writing and aspire for our children to become independent, confident and inspirational writers. We aim to provide a purpose for writing and make topics engaging, fun and inspirational for all the children through the use of Pathways to Write. This scheme uses high quality, interesting texts to motivate the children. Children are encouraged to not only write to the best of their ability, but also to independently improve through editing and re-drafting their own and others’ work.

At our school, we encourage all children to read for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as for information. The teaching of phonics and spelling is continued at Broomfields Junior School, to develop children's  learning in reading and writing competently. Building on skills from The Cobbs Infant School, we equip the children with a range of reading strategies to decode and interpret a wide variety of texts. We endeavour to create a text-rich learning environment which will inspire and motivate, and enable our children to become lifelong readers.

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programmes of Pathways to Write and Pathways to Read.  Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given a variety of opportunities to engage with these texts to achieve a deeper understanding of language for speaking, listening, reading and writing.  Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these opportunities in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through these approaches and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.

Broomfields Junior School believes that writing is a key skill for life both inside and outside of education and that is why it is incorporated across the whole curriculum. Our aim is to provide children with key transferrable writing skills to build on year on year, that can be used throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for secondary school.

Using quality texts, we provide children with a range of engaging hooks to capture their imagination. We aim to provide the children with varied reasons for writing and believe that this not only produces higher quality writing, but allows our learners to apply their skills to a range of different contexts.

Vocabulary is prioritised for all learners to increase children’s understanding of trickier texts used across our curriculum. Our aim is for ALL learners to achieve their full potential in writing and we are committed to providing the scaffolds and challenge needed in order for our children to achieve this.  Children are encouraged to write to the best of their ability and taught to independently improve and edit their own and others’ work.

English is a core subject and the school follows the statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of writing as laid out in the National Curriculum (2014).  

Children move through a process when writing. They begin with the immersion into the text type or stimulus, then onto the gathering of rich and relevant vocabulary, moving into the teaching and learning of appropriate grammar and sentence structures, through to the planning and writing. The final stage is the editing, improving, publishing and performance of the end piece. We teach modelled, shared and independent writing in daily English lessons across the school.  Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation is mainly taught in the context of the English lesson as this enables the child to apply this knowledge to their independent writing. Stand–alone grammar and punctuation sessions are also delivered during core skills sessions.

Throughout school, writing is celebrated in many ways and each classroom has an English working wall where useful resources for writing are displayed to support children’s collaborative and independent learning.

Methodology

Pathways to Write follows a Mastery-Learning model. Key skills are taught and repeated; there are multiple opportunities throughout each unit to use and apply the skills until they can be mastered fully. Within each sequence, there are many opportunities for incidental short- burst writing with an extended written outcome built up to by the end of each unit.

Planning follows the sequence below:

• Session 1: Gateway - This is an opportunity to hook the pupils into the context of learning and to assess previously taught mastery skills. A short writing task is set at the end of this session to assess the application of Gateway skills. (The focus is on assessment of previously taught skills and is not intended to assess pupils on skills or genres that they have not been taught before.) Where pupils are struggling to apply and to use Gateways keys, these should be built into the planning of the unit to ensure more personalised learning.
• Sessions 2-11: Pathway - In this section, the Mastery skills are introduced with many opportunities along the way to practise and apply these skills in different writing tasks. The tasks use genres that the pupils will be most familiar with such as character or setting descriptions, dialogue, diary entries, instructions, poetry and sentence work, providing a range of on-going evidence for writing assessment.
• Sessions 12-15: Writeway -This final section of the sequence comprises of 4 sessions. It begins with sectioning and sequencing texts using a model. If the final outcome is narrative based, then this will usually be the text which has been read or for younger pupils a shortened version to support re-telling has been included. If the outcome is a non-fiction text, then a model will be available in the resource section. Within the Writeaway, pupils are encouraged to plan, write, check, edit, re-draft and publish as required; with the focus on using and applying the mastery skills they have been taught.