At Albany Infant and Nursery School, our knowledge-rich curriculum is underpinned by our core curriculum principles. It is our intent to provide pupils with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively.

We aspire for excellence and encourage all pupils, whatever their ability or starting point, to achieve the best they possibly can. We believe that children need to develop a secure knowledge-base in Literacy, which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the primary National Curriculum. At Albany Infant and Nursery, we break down the key component knowledge into progressive statements so that our youngest to our oldest pupils, experience and understand a breadth of genres and writing styles. We recognise that writing is a key life skill that is crucial to a high-quality education and lays the foundations for lifelong learning.

At Albany Infant and Nursery School, we want our children to develop into confident, able writers who find pleasure in the writing process. We want them to be successful not only whilst at our school but as they transition into Key Stage Two and beyond. We want our pupils to:

• Develop the gross and fine motor skills needed to use writing tools and equipment successfully
• View themselves as real and purposeful writers
• Be able to write for a variety of purposes and audiences
• Consider writing to be an interesting, creative and enjoyable process
• Know how to organise, plan and monitor their oral and written compositions via scaffolds which are often derived from model texts
• Know how to draft, edit and revise their writing
• Develop a progressive understanding of punctuation, grammar, spelling and handwriting
• Reduce their reliance on models, scaffolds and structured support until they are capable of completing a writing task independently.

Our ambition is that in all English lessons, children’s knowledge and experiences are deepened through the use of high-quality texts, and that opportunities are provided for children to apply skills and produce outcomes for a range of audiences and purposes. We strive to broaden and deepen all children’s knowledge and understanding.