St Stephen's Catholic Primary School and Nursery
SPELLING, PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR
INTENT
Through our English curriculum, we strive to teach the children how important their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills will be in the real world. By providing an enriched and engaging English curriculum, we develop confident and enthusiastic learners who are equipped with the tools they need to participate fully as a member of society both now and in their future.
At St. Stephen's, we ensure that our children have curiosity and an understanding of the meaning of language. Pupils will feel ready to understand the evolving English language and acquire strategies to enable them to become independent learners in English. They will have the building blocks necessary to become successful writers and be ready for life beyond Primary School.
Please follow the links below to each year's spelling overview:
Whole School Writing Progression:
IMPLEMENTATION
Phonics:
The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.
Phonics is taught daily to all children in Foundation Stage, Year 1 and Year 2, with children who have not passed phonics screening in Year 1 receiving extra intervention. Staff systematically teach learners the relationship between sounds and the written spelling patterns, or graphemes, which represent them. Phonics is delivered in a whole class format because it enables staff to ensure application across subjects embedding the process in a rich literacy environment for early readers. Intervention is planned for those children who are working below expected levels.
Spelling Sessions:
Pupils from Year 2 upwards take part in one dedicated spelling session each week. Within this sessions, key spelling rules and patterns are explored and effective strategies for learning, remembering, understanding and applying are taught. Pupils record some of this learning within their handwriting and spelling journals, which they may refer back to when needed. Spellings taught are also referred to in writing sessions and children are encouraged to use learnt spellings across the curriculum.
Each year group sends a weekly list of spellings home based upon the spelling sessions that week. Pupils are to practice their words and ensure that they understand them before taking part in the weekly spelling test.
Punctuation and Grammar:
Punctuation and Grammar is taught within the Writing sequences through the Literacy Tree resources.
Marking and Editing
Within all lessons, teachers and teaching assistants act as a model for quality spelling, punctuation and handwriting. Work is marked using signs and symbols which highlight errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar (see marking policy) and children are given time to address these errors.
For spelling, in Years 1 to 4, teachers identify up to three spellings to be corrected. These are written by the teacher at the end of the work and children are expected to rewrite each word three times. Teachers should check these have been spelt correctly with high expectations of letter formation. For children in Year 5 and Year 6, ‘Sp’ is used to identify spelling errors and children are expected to correct spelling errors using a dictionary or a word bank where appropriate.
IMPACT
- Pupils can use their phonic skills effectively when blending phonemes for reading and when segmenting phonemes for spelling.
- Pupils have an interest in words, their meanings and their origins, developing a growing vocabulary both for speaking and writing.
- Pupils write with confidence and creativity while developing the skills to self-edit, correct and improve.
- Skills progress (grammar and punctuation) throughout the school is evident in children’s books.
- Pupils acquire the knowledge and learn the skills to apply their spelling, grammar and punctuation skills to a variety of purposes in a range of thematic, cross-curricular contexts.
- Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support spelling, grammar and composition and home, and contribute regularly to homework.
- Teacher marking provides positive support and directs the pupil on their next steps to improve their writing.
- Pupils use classroom resources to support their learning.
- Pupils will leave St. Stephen's being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught.
- The percentage of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
- The percentage of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
- The will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs
non-disadvantaged).
