English

At Richard Whittington we celebrate that mastering of the English language permeates everything we do. Our overarching aim is to promote high standards of literacy and language by equipping our pupils with a strong understanding of both spoken and written language, whilst trying to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. We aim to provide a stimulating, interactive, fun and challenging English curriculum that prepares our pupils for life beyond our schools and for the ever-changing world in which they live in. We are passionate about valuing the notion that English underpins learning in every subject and work to ensure that there are significant opportunities across the wider curriculum for our pupils to embed their literacy skills. We also aim to build a life-long love of literature so that throughout their lives children can use the literary world as a means of escapism, relaxation and pure enjoyment. 

 Writing 

 At Richard Whittington we recognise that quality writing is a product of following a process of planning, crafting a range of engaging sentences, using success criteria, drafting and editing. From Nursery upwards pupils are immersed in rich opportunities for writing and take great pride in improving their vocabulary and developing their individual writing style. Teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar skills is an integral part of our English lessons and pupils’ proficiency is developed through imaginative, stimulating and interactive activities. Teachers use opportunities in our broad, balanced curriculum to further embed, extend and develop the writing skills of our students. Within our literacy lessons teachers follow a repeated pattern of ‘Initiate’, ‘Model’ and ‘Enable’ whereby they use the three zones of writing to provide a consistent whole school systematic approach to writing carefully constructed sentences, that are based on a strong teacher model in order to set high expectations for writing. 

Writing Whole School Progression