Our vision

At Henleaze Infant and Junior Schools, we aim to inspire children to develop a love for writing and we work closely together to promote curiosity and enthusiasm for language from Reception to Year 6 and beyond. By the time children leave our schools, they are original and imaginative writers with a wide-ranging vocabulary; they are able to understand sophisticated texts and express themselves in a wide range of contexts. 

English sits at the heart of our curriculum – it is through language that children learn to form concepts, connect ideas and express themselves eloquently. Through literacy, in all its forms, children learn to both make sense of the world and shape their place within it. 

Our Curriculum

At Henleaze Infant and Junior Schools, we follow the CUSP curriculum. It is cumulative, coherent and connected. Across the CUSP Early Foundations and Primary Writing sequence, what pupils will know and be able to do across the curriculum has been carefully mapped. This ensures that learning builds cumulatively and helps students to make connections between concepts that they have learnt. Prior-learning has been identified and mapped to the curriculum so that teachers can build new knowledge. 

The CUSP writing sequence is organised into Block A and Block B units. In Block A, pupils meet key concepts for the first time. In Block B, pupils revisit these concepts and build on prior knowledge. Each block has two parts. In the first part of the block, pupils are taught key concepts at sentence level and master these through short writing tasks. In the second part of the block, pupils apply this knowledge to an extended outcome. Teachers use a model text to instruct the key concepts and pupils use this to help them structure their own work.

Children have daily writing lessons. In addition to this, children are explicitly taught spelling and handwriting skills.  Handwriting skills are taught using the ULS scheme in all year groups. In EYFS and KS1, spelling is taught as part of phonics lessons, whereas KS2 children follow the CUSP spelling curriculum. 

Impact

Each block has clear goals – these are identified in the Knowledge Organiser and Ingredients for Success Checklist. Pupils and teachers evaluate their extended writing outcome against these and use these to edit work and identify concepts that need more teaching. These tell us if pupils are keeping up with the curriculum. We use the Key Indicators for writing, along with the exemplification, to help assess pupils’ writing summatively. This tells us whether they have learnt what is intended in the curriculum overall.

Subject overview