At the Whiteoak Academies, opportunities for writing across the curriculum are planned with care. Our enquiry approach to History and Geography results in at least three of the six units ending in an essay-style response. For example, to conclude the Year 4 unit ‘Would you live in the shadow of a volcano?’ pupils write a balanced discussion text, highlighting the benefits and disadvantages of inhabiting a volcanic region.

Where the genre of writing is familiar to children, these writing tasks provide opportunities for retrieval and the application of known structural and language features previously taught in English. This reduces cognitive load, ensuring the children can focus upon the geographical and historical content under study. Where the genre is less familiar, these final pieces (answering the over-arching enquiry question) may be written as part of an English writing loops journey.