SPAG
Updated January 2020:
SPAG Ambition:
Our SPAG curriculum allows for all pupils (SEND, disadvantaged and the more able) to achieve high outcomes whilst demonstrating all aspects of Preston Hedge’s ethos; fun, creativity and achievement.
The curriculum promotes an excellent understanding of Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar by teaching progressive, challenging lessons that build year on year. All pupils in years 2-6 participate in daily lessons that are fun, engaging and upbeat, promoting the use of whiteboard work to ensure excellent assessment and progression in every lesson.
Our children acquire outstanding knowledge from discreet SPAG lessons, whilst applying subject specific skills in challenging questions and their writing. As a result, teachers progress the children’s SPAG knowledge and skills year on year, attaining outstanding results across the school.
SPAG Implementation:
SPAG is taught daily as a discreet 15 minute lesson.
SPAG Curriculum Part A (Years 1 & 2)
SPAG Curriculum Part B (Years 3-5)
*There is no Year 6 curriculum as we teach this in Year 5.
SPAG is implemented through a single focus which is taught through an ABC structure consistently across the school. The children are encouraged to use whiteboards through the entirety of the lesson to ensure assessment is ongoing and that the lesson’s knowledge and skill focus is suitably challenging. Every lesson begins with the teacher sharing the knowledge focus whilst demonstrating specific knowledge-related skills and success criterion (A) before practicing questions and examples with the children in a fun, engaging environment to develop and appropriately challenge their learning (B). Finally, to consolidate the knowledge focus and related skills, the children are provided with bespoke test questions to celebrate the lesson’s learning and celebrate their daily achievement.
Our curriculum covers a wide variety of Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, categorised into word, sentence, text, punctuation and terminology.
Spelling at Preston Hedge’s is taught separately as it requires a study of age-expected words, rules and exceptions. Each year group has a set of spellings to learn before investigating spelling patterns and their associate rules. In years 3-6, the children partake in spelling investigations which develop their knowledge of patterns and rules and how to apply them to aid their spelling ability and understanding, why words are spelt a certain way and to support their ability to spell new words as their language
SPAG Impact:
Children at Preston Hedge’s thoroughly enjoy SPAG and leave school confident in their ability to understand the English language. Their achievements are outstanding across all pupil groups and they confidently apply their knowledge and skills from SPAG to enable them creative access to the written word.
Our children leave Preston Hedge’s fully prepared for their learning journey to continue during secondary education as their exceptional Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar knowledge and skills eliminate barriers and promote a love of language that encourages outstanding writers and readers.
In 2019, 93% of pupils achieved the expected standard (100+) in the key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test, significantly above national and in the highest 20% of all schools.
In 2019, 70% of pupils achieved the high standard (110+) in the key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test, significantly above national and in the highest 20% of all schools.