At St Nicholas CE Primary School we seek to provide an all-inclusive environment where all children achieve their potential by 'exploring possibilities together.' We aim to develop our personal values of respect, curiosity, community and friendship. In English, we aim to inspire as well as educate our pupils. We provide the children with every opportunity possible, from high quality teaching and learning, to the use of a wide variety of outside resources such as: author visits, book fairs and theatre visits to develop their skills and love of this subject.

Our English Curriculum encourages our children to be:

• Effective, competent communicators and good listeners;
• Express opinions, articulate feelings and formulate responses to a range of texts both fiction and non-fiction using appropriate technical vocabulary;
• Foster an interest in words and their meanings, and to develop a growing vocabulary in both spoken and written form;
• Enjoy and engage with and understand a range of text types and genres;
• Be able to write in a variety of styles and forms showing awareness of audience and purpose;
• Develop powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness in all areas of literacy;
• Use grammar and punctuation accurately;
• Understand spelling conventions;
• Produce effective, well-presented written work using Letterjoin. Letterjoin is our chosen handwriting scheme at St. Nicholas. This is a progressive and developmental scheme from Reception through to Year 6.     

From September 2024, we have adopted a new approach to teaching writing using 'The Write Stuff' by Jane Considine. This approach is being implemented across our school, from Reception to Year 6. In short, this approach gives pupils the tools to apply basic skills, vocabulary and grammar to write effective sentences. It also helps equip children with the tools and confidence to write for a range of different purposes and audiences.

At the heart of 'The Write Stuff' is the 'Writing Rainbow', consisting of three writing zones: The 'Fantastics', (ideas for writing), the 'Grammaristics' (tools for writing) and the 'Boomtastics' (techniques for writing). Within the Writing Rainbow are 27 lenses -each of the three writing zones has nine lenses (symbols). These 'lenses' are used to support children on their writing journey. They help to give pupils a clear focus and purpose for writing in each lesson. The Write Stuff approach has a prescriptive teaching sequence which consists of 'Experience Days,' (where children are immersed in an experience linked to the text their writing is based on), 'Sentence Stacking Lessons' (where teachers model writing with a sharp focus on vocabulary gathering and inviting children's own ideas) and 'Independent Writing' (where children apply all they have learnt over the course of a unit, with opportunity to 'deepen the moment' for those who wish to extend their writing). 

Please see below our writing overview for 2024-2025.

Please read our English Policy under the policy section of our website for details of how we teach reading, writing and phonics.

Also, please see the right-hand section of this page, 'Read, Write, Inc', for further details of our phonics programme.