English

Our Writing Offer

At Clarendon Federation, Writing is seen as an extension of our Reading offer. We value reading and writing as essential skills and, to that end, ensure that all children progress well in literacy so they are prepared for the next stage of their education. Our approach to English and Writing specifically, is an equitable one: we achieve equity by ensuring that research informs the development of our universal offer for Writing. In addition, we supplement our universal offer with targeted support for those children who may need further help. Targeted support will be deployed to ensure all children are meeting or exceeding their potential. This means that our targeted support will secure important transcription skills (foundational knowledge), and target excellence in Writing. 

The design of our Writing curriculum is built around high-quality inclusive texts and animations. We aim to select texts that foster strong links with other curriculum subjects to support children’s working memory. We are research informed in our approach to choosing texts, using organisations such as Book Trust, CLPE and The Literacy Trust to support our selections. We know that texts provide us with powerful contexts in which to explore diversity, social justice and British Values so we purposely seek out texts that help to enrich our children’s personal development and build cultural capital.

The design and delivery of Writing skills has been developed around the principles of foundational knowledge: children need to be secure in the basics of writing - transcription (sentence level grammar, basic punctuation, phonics for spelling and handwriting) before they embark on composing more complex pieces of writing. In Key Stage Two, our curriculum progressively develops the skill of composition whilst securing foundational knowledge through our slow release teaching sequence.

Handwriting Approach

Good handwriting is critical to children's writing progress. It is essential that handwriting is practised until it is fluent and effortless so that the children can put all their effort into thinking about what they are writing.  As a Federation, we use Unlocking Letters and Sounds Handwriting to discretely teach letter formation.  Unlocking Handwriting is a whole school handwriting programme. The progression used in Unlocking Handwriting follows the National Curriculum progression, with some additional content included based upon a wealth of experience of teaching handwriting in schools, feedback from schools seeking a comprehensive, progressive handwriting programme and updated guidance (including requirements from the National Curriculum).

The progression Is structured broadly in units which are broken down into multiple sessions, offering a clear focus for each discrete handwriting lesson. Similar to the structure of Unlocking Letters and Sounds, Unlocking Handwriting provides ‘Mastery’ units for children to embed and secure the knowledge they have previously learnt. The programme also provides frequent opportunities for children to revisit previous learning and embed this before further refining their handwriting skills.

Our Phonics Offer

At Clarendon Federation, we use Unlocking Letters and Sounds which was validated by the DfE in December 2021. We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.

In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check. In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive. Children then continue their journey into spelling through Unlocking Letters and Sounds throughout Year 2 and into KS2.

If your child is still accessing phonics support, this will continue alongside their learning to help strengthen their reading, spelling and confidence with phonics knowledge. We recognise that every child develops at their own pace and will ensure they receive the support they need to make continued progress. If you would like to find out more about your child's current phonics provision and next steps, please speak to your child's class teacher.