English

At Whyteleafe Primary, children from Year 1 through to Year 6 follow the CUSP Writing curriculum (Curriculum by Unity Schools Partnership). This approach is grounded in robust educational research and is built on the principle that all pupils should be explicitly taught the knowledge, skills and strategies needed to communicate effectively through writing. The curriculum is carefully sequenced so that pupils continually build on what they already know, enabling them to become confident and expert writers.

The CUSP Writing curriculum is progressive, coherent and adaptable. Its design focuses on strengthening pupils’ understanding of grammar and composition whilst instilling a love of writing. Regular retrieval practice helps pupils secure new learning and begin to use it independently in their own work.

We believe that strong literacy skills are central to unlocking future opportunities for our pupils as they underpin success in every subject. Our aim is to provide a writing curriculum that empowers children to become fluent, confident and enthusiastic writers with a lasting appreciation of English language and literature.

Each writing unit is carefully designed with expert subject knowledge at its core. Teachers introduce and practise essential concepts and skills, before guiding pupils to apply them in purposeful, extended pieces of writing. Across the year, pupils revisit key text types twice, ensuring they have repeated opportunities to consolidate and refine their skills. Grammar and punctuation are taught both explicitly and in context, allowing pupils to see how they are used in authentic examples before embedding them in their own writing.

Below is the unsequenced overview of the Writing curriculum. The green boxes show narrative texts, the blue boxes show non-narrative texts and the orange boxes show poetry. The purple arrows show where an equivalent text form is studied in a subsequent year group. This helps teachers to build on pupils’ prior knowledge.

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that every young learner can thrive in the context of CUSP Writing. Teachers use the Scaffolding Toolkit, which outlines key strategies for adaptations that can be made to ensure that every lesson serves every learner.