English - Speaking and Writing

Speaking and Listening, Writing & Spelling

Our Ewhurst Vision is for children to love writing; write independently and accurately about useful things they know and love.  Our inspiring and exciting writing curriculum will enable the children at Ewhurst to be independent writers for a range of audiences and purposes across different text types. Pupils will be taught to apply their writing skills across all curriculum subjects and themes which have been carefully developed around quality, challenging texts.

We believe that children should be exposed to a wide range of text types, genres and authors that challenge stereotypes and celebrate diversity enabling them to use these as models and inspiration to write in a diverse way. The memorable writing experiences they gain at Ewhurst, will help them develop excellent communication skills, by expanding their vocabulary and allowing them opportunities to express preferences, opinions and ask questions about what they have heard and written. We do all we can to help children learn to write and take a growth mindset approach, having high expectations for all children to become confident, able writers.

We recognise the importance of children demonstrating accurate spelling and recognising letter strings and formation.  In Reception and Year 1 daily phonics is the key to the children’s learning of spelling. This is taught using the Early Letters and Sounds programme. Children are taught to blend sounds to read and segment to spell. At the same time, they learn words that are not phonically regular (Harder to read and spell words). In Year 2, ELS is taught daily with children moving on to spelling lessons, once all GPC’s have been taught and children can recognise them confidently.

Click to see our English - Speaking curriculum tree and our English - Writing curriculum tree.