From September 2024 we will follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided.  Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.  

You will find the end of year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.

Year 2 have begun this year with the most fantastic book! We are reading and working using Troll Swap by Leigh Hodgkinson as our inspiration. We are looking at Tabitha Lumpit and Timothy Limpit and how they are not like other trolls and children! They swap places, but soon realise that they were perfect as they were!

We have created noun phrases, written instructions, letters and innovated our own version of the story.

Here are a few of our pieces of work...

Year 2 have been looking at the non fiction text 'The Great Fire of London' this half term. We have enjoyed reading the different contents of the book and it has really helped us with our sticky knowledge from History.

We have written diary entries, job descriptions, created posters and our final piece was a non-fictio9n report telling people all about where, when and the fire started, the events and how London changed after the fire had stopped.

We have used noun phrases, adjectives and used conjunctions such as because, and, but and the tricky 'or'.

Here are a few examples of our work...

Year 1 have been reading Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.  This is a very simple tale of a penguin who arrives unannounced at the front door of 'the boy'. The penguin proceeds to follow the boy around, although he looks very sad. This leads the boy to believe that he is lost, and so he then endeavours to help the penguin.  He finally gets him back to Antarctica, to discover he wasn't lost all along ... just lonely.

So far the children have made lists of items they would see and hear at the beach using their phonics, they have thought about how the characters are feeling,  written fact files about penguins and packed a case for the penguin and the boy ... who we have called Tom.  We have our own lost and found office in the classroom where we have been writing out lots of labels for all the 'lost' animals and different items!  We will re-tell the story as well as innovate our own class story!

Year 2 have had an amazing time reading and enjoying the text Grandad's Secret Giant. The unit looks at breaking the text down, exploring new vocabulary, working collaboratively on group tasks, art work and drama.

Children had the opportunity to write in many different genres both independently, as a class and in small groups. 

Take a look at some examples of the writing we produced.........

Handwriting

At Butler’s Hill we follow the Achieving Excellence in Handwriting programme for the teaching of handwriting throughout school.  This follows a teaching sequence of letters, the use of line guided paper and clear consistent terminology.

The approach progresses through the school with an emphasis being placed on the use of consistent language.  Specific handwriting displays in each classroom will reflect the consistency of language and approach used throughout school. Handwriting will be carefully modelled by their teacher using the classroom visualiser and children have specifically designed writing books to apply this. Where appropriate these line guides are used across all subjects including phonics.