Linking the writing activities within QCA's primary schemes of work with non-fiction writing objectives in the National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching

To see examples of how objectives can be linked to purposeful writing activities from the schemes of work, click on the links above.

The QCA schemes of work exemplify how the National Curriculum requirements for each subject area can be translated into coherent learning activities. Each unit of work contains purposeful opportunities for speaking and listening, reading and writing.

In planning for curriculum coverage, teachers can link work in the Literacy Hour with work in other curriculum areas. By emphasising the links between English and the rest of the curriculum in this way, pupils are given opportunities to enhance their learning across the whole curriculum and to recognise how knowledge and skills from one area of the curriculum can be developed within another.

Work in the Literacy Hour can be linked with work in other areas of the curriculum in these ways:

• content knowledge acquired in subject area study can be brought to the Literacy Hour as the basis for informed discussion and purposeful writing;
• skills taught in the Literacy Hour (eg notetaking, skimming and scanning, writing) can be practised and developed via purposeful use in other curriculum areas. In such cases pupils may need explicit reminders to help them make the learning links;
• skills taught in other curriculum areas (eg analysing evidence, reading visual information sources) can be enhanced via further focused teaching and practice in the Literacy Hour;
• subject specific vocabulary and subject specific patterns of language can be further analysed and explored within the Literacy Hour.

In order to plan for such productive links, teachers will need to map activities in the schemes of work with objectives from the NLS Framework. Some examples showing how the objectives can be linked to purposeful writing activities from QCA schemes of work for history, geography, design and technology, religious education and science are given for each year group.