The Curriculum at FHC is designed to ensure that children become confident writers. We strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners; English learning is key in this. We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach; this links closely to the way we teach reading, as the text that we use in writing lessons, where possible, is the same text as the one that we use within our reading lessons. Careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s English learning is relevant and meaningful: where possible linking our reading, writing and the topic that we are covering in History and Geography. We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.

To ensure we have strong, confident writers we:

• secure effective phonics knowledge
• embed story language and vocabulary through talk for writing
• support the structure of writing using blueprints
• through the box plan method teach high quality spag skills as part of each writing block

We use Christopher Booker story planning blueprints and Sue Palmer’s non-fiction planning blueprints to support children’s structure for writing.

All children progress in reading and writing at different rates and some children benefit from interventions to secure key skills. We use:

• Lexia
• Little Wandle ‘Keep up’ and ‘Catch up’ session
• Alpha to Omega
• Small group handwriting
• Tailored teacher-led small group interventions